_stephen_brookfield__the_power_of_critical_theory_(bookfi.org).pdf

The Power of Critical Theory for Adult Learningand Teaching

The Pow

er of Critical T

heory

forAd

ult Learningand

TeachingStephen D.Brookfield

Stephen D.

Brookfield

www.openup.co.uk

“Stephen Brookfield offers an intellectually powerful, persuasiveand accessible introduction to a crucial body of ideas that willhelp people working with adult learners to rethink theirassumptions. I believe it will be an essential resource for anyonewho sees lifelong learning as a journey of constructiveresistance and serious engagement with the world around us.”John Field, University of Stirling, UK.

“This is a sophisticated and comprehensive treatment of thepower of Socratic questioning of dogmas and a propheticwitness against the conservative status quo...a must read for allseriously engaged teachers.”Cornel West, Princeton University, USA.

“I learned more from this book than from dozens of other adulteducation publications... This book is sure to become a majorreference text in the field.”Elizabeth Hayes, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA.

Cover design Hybert Design • www.hybertdesign.com

This major contribution to the literature on adult education provides adulteducators with an accessible overview of critical theory’s central ideas. Usingmany direct quotes from the theorists’ works, Brookfield shows how critical theoryilluminates the everyday practices of adult educators and helps them make senseof the dilemmas, contradictions and frustrations they experience in their work.

Drawing widely on central texts in critical theory, Brookfield argues that a criticaltheory of adult learning must focus on understanding how adults learn tochallenge ideology, contest hegemony, unmask power, overcome alienation, learnliberation, reclaim reason and practice democracy. These tasks form the focus ofsuccessive chapters, while later chapters review the central contentions of criticaltheory through the contemporary lenses of race and gender. The final chapterreviews adult educational practices and looks at what it means to teach critically.

Essential reading for anyone teaching, working in, studying or researchingadult education.

Stephen D. Brookfield is Distinguished University Professor at the University ofSt. Thomas in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota. He has degrees from theUniversities of Coventry, Reading and Leicester, UK, and has taught in colleges offurther, technical, adult and higher education in the UK, Canada and the UnitedStates. He is the author of numerous acclaimed books on adult education,including Discussion as a Way of Teaching (2005), Becoming a Critically ReflectiveTeacher (1995), The Skillful Teacher (1990), Developing Critical Thinkers(Open University Press, 1987) and Understanding and Facilitating Adult Learning(Open University Press, 1986).

THE POWER OF CRITICAL THEORY FORADULT LEARNING AND TEACHING

The Power of Critical Theoryfor Adult Learning and Teaching

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“In masterly and lucid fashion Stephen Brookfield effortlessly con-nects theory and practice. Simplifying without eroding the com-plexity of critical theory, Brookfield traverses the grand themes ofideology, power, alienation, liberation, reason, and democracy, show-ing how they inform the adult education practice of fostering criti-cal thinking and critical reflection.”

—Mark Tennant, professor of education and dean,University Graduate School, University

of Technology–Sydney, Australia

“This extraordinarily useful book illuminates the complex and abstractconcepts of critical theory through frequent examples and practicalapplications. By reviewing the contributions and critiques of AfricanAmerican and feminist writers, The Power of Critical Theory for AdultLearning and Teaching provides an inclusive and accessible entry intothe critical tradition.”

—Tom Heaney, professor of adult education,National Louis University, Chicago

“In The Power of Critical Theory for Adult Learning and Teaching, StephenBrookfield provides a lucid, accessible overview of how critical the-ory (with its daunting vocabularies and internal debates) illumi-nates the contexts of adult learning and orients teaching practices.The book stands an excellent chance of establishing critical theoryas a dominant and legitimate interpretive practice within adult edu-cation.”

—Michael Welton, professor of adult education,Mount St. Vincent University, Canada

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The Power ofCritical Theoryfor Adult Learningand TeachingStephen D. Brookfield

Open University Press

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Open University PressMcGraw-Hill EducationMcGraw-Hill HouseShoppenhangers RoadMaidenhead, BerkshireEngland SL6 2QL

email: [email protected] wide web: www.openup.co.uk

and Two Penn Plaza, New York, NY 1012–2289USA

First published 2005

Copyright © Stephen Brookfield

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, nopart of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or byany means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior writtenpermission of the publisher or a licence from the Copyright Licensing Agency Limited. Details of suchlicences (for reprographic reproduction) may be obtained from the Copyright Licensing Agency Limited of90 Tottenham Court Road, London, W1T 4LP.

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0 335 21132 1 (pb) 0 335 21133 X (hb)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataCIP data has been applied for

Published simultaneously in North, South and Central America by Jossey-Bass/John Wiley & Sons. Inc. as ThePower of Critical Theory: Liberating Adult Learning and Teaching

Printed and bound in Poland by OZGraf S.A.www.polskabook.pl

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The Author

Stephen D. BrookfieldThe father of Molly and Colin, and the husband of Kim, Stephen D.Brookfield is currently Distinguished Professor at the University ofSt. Thomas in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota. He also serves asconsultant to the adult education doctoral program at NationalLouis University in Chicago. Prior to moving to Minnesota, he spentten years as professor in the Department of Higher and Adult Edu-cation at Teachers College, Columbia University, where he is stilladjunct professor.

He received his B.A. degree (1970) from Coventry University inmodern studies, his M.A. degree (1974) from the University of Read-ing in sociology, and his Ph.D. degree (1980) from the University ofLeicester in adult education. He also holds a postgraduate diploma(1971) from the University of London, Chelsea College, in modernsocial and cultural studies and a postgraduate diploma (1977) fromthe University of Nottingham in adult education. In 1991 he wasawarded an honorary doctor of letters degree from the University Sys-tem of New Hampshire for his contributions to understanding adultlearning. In 2003 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Con-cordia University for his contributions to adult education practice.

Stephen began his teaching career in 1970 and has held appoint-ments at colleges of further, technical, adult, and higher educationin the United Kingdom and at universities in Canada (University ofBritish Columbia) and the United States (Columbia University,Teachers College, and the University of St. Thomas). In 1989 he wasvisiting fellow at the Institute for Technical and Adult Teacher Edu-cation in what is now the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia.In 2001 he received the Leadership Award from the Association forContinuing Higher Education (ACHE) for “extraordinary contribu-tions to the general field of continuing education on a national and

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international level.” In 2002 he was visiting professor at HarvardUniversity Graduate School of Education. In 2003–2004 he was theHelen Le Baron Hilton Chair at Iowa State University. He has runnumerous workshops on teaching, adult learning, and critical think-ing around the world and delivered many keynote addresses atregional, national, and international education conferences.

He is a three-time winner of the Cyril O. Houle World Awardfor Literature in Adult Education: in 1986 for his book Under-standing and Facilitating Adult Learning: A Comprehensive Analysis ofPrinciples and Effective Practices (1986), in 1989 for Developing Criti-cal Thinkers: Challenging Adults to Explore Alternative Ways of Think-ing and Acting (1987), and in 1996 for Becoming a Critically ReflectiveTeacher (1995). Understanding and Facilitating Adult Learning alsowon the 1986 Imogene E. Okes Award for Outstanding Researchin Adult Education. These awards were all presented by the Amer-ican Association for Adult and Continuing Education. His book(coauthored with Stephen Preskill) Discussion as a Way of Teaching:Tools and Techniques for Democratic Classrooms (1999) was an Educa-tional Studies Association Critics’ Choice for 1999. His other booksare Adult Learners, Adult Education and the Community (1984), Self-Directed Learning: From Theory to Practice (1985), Learning Democracy:Eduard Lindeman on Adult Education and Social Change (1987), Train-ing Educators of Adults: The Theory and Practice of Graduate Adult Edu-cation (1988), and The Skillful Teacher: On Technique, Trust, andResponsiveness in the Classroom (1990).

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Preface

A couple of years ago, one of the most dispiriting things that canhappen to a teacher happened to me. I had just finished teachinga semester-long course on the philosophy of adult education, a sub-stantial portion of which had focused on critical theory. I hadasked students to engage with key figures in critical theory such asMarx, Gramsci, Habermas, and Foucault, mostly by reading sec-ondary texts that summarized these writers’ ideas and placed themin an adult educational context. As part of the course, studentswrote essays and gave presentations in which they considered howtheir experiences as adult learners or adult educators were illumi-nated by critical theory. As students were leaving the last class ofthe semester, I overheard one say to another, “I still don’t see whywe had to read all this critical theory. What’s Gramsci got to dowith adult education?”

Since I had just spent a good part of four months arguing forcritical theory as a useful lens through which adult educators couldview their practice, this comment took the wind right out of mysails. This student had written the required assignments, partici-pated in the required team presentations, and successfully passedthe course. Yet, clearly, all this had happened without any real con-nection being made between that student’s practice and the criti-cal tradition. This book is my attempt to deal with that student’scomplaint. Its overarching purpose is to try to convince adult edu-cators that critical theory should be considered seriously as a per-spective that can help them make some sense of the dilemmas,contradictions, and frustrations they experience in their work.

In a sense, this book is attempting to put the critical back intocritical thinking by emphasizing how thinking critically is an inherentlypolitical process. Critical thinking is a dominant discourse in adulteducation, usually characterized by a particular understanding of

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what this intellectual process involves. To think critically is mostlydefined as the process of unearthing, and then researching, theassumptions one is operating under, primarily by taking different per-spectives on familiar, taken-for-granted beliefs and behaviors. As Iargue in Chapter One, this notion of criticality draws on a numberof intellectual traditions, including analytic philosophy, pragmatism,constructivism, psychoanalysis, and critical theory. The first of thesetraditions—analytic philosophy—is the one that most strongly frameshow critical thinking is currently conceived and taught in contem-porary higher and adult education. From this perspective, to be crit-ical is to be skilled at argument analysis, to recognize false inferencesand logical fallacies, to be able to distinguish bias from fact, opinionfrom evidence, and so on. These are valuable, even essential, intel-lectual functions, but they focus on cognitive processes to the neglectof social and political critique.

In this book I focus on a very different tradition informing crit-ical thinking, the tradition of critical theory. Critical theory viewsthinking critically as being able to identify, and then to challengeand change, the process by which a grossly iniquitous society usesdominant ideology to convince people this is a normal state of af-fairs. As a body of work, critical theory is grounded in three coreassumptions regarding the way the world is organized:

1. That apparently open, Western democracies are actually highlyunequal societies in which economic inequity, racism, and classdiscrimination are empirical realities

2. That the way this state of affairs is reproduced and made toseem normal, natural, and inevitable (thereby heading offpotential challenges to the system) is through the dissemina-tion of dominant ideology

3. That critical theory attempts to understand this state of affairsas a necessary prelude to changing it

Dominant ideology comprises the set of broadly acceptedbeliefs and practices that frame how people make sense of theirexperiences and live their lives. When it works effectively, it ensuresthat an unequal, racist, and sexist society is able to reproduce itselfwith minimal opposition. Its chief function is to convince peoplethat the world is organized the way it is for the best of all reasons

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and that society works in the best interests of all. Critical theory re-gards dominant ideology as inherently manipulative and duplici-tous. From the perspective of critical theory, a critical adult is onewho can discern how the ethic of capitalism, and the logic ofbureaucratic rationality, push people into ways of living that per-petuate economic, racial, and gender oppression. Additionally, andcrucially, critical theory views a critical adult as one who takesaction to create more democratic, collectivist economic and socialforms. Some in the tradition (for example, Cornel West) link socialchange to democratic socialism; others (for example, ErichFromm), to socialist humanism. Clearly, then, the way critical the-ory defines being critical is far more politicized than the wayhumanistic psychology—until recently the dominant discourse inadult education—regards this idea.

My previous books have been concerned mostly with explain-ing general approaches toward the development of critical think-ing and have given relatively little attention to exploring thetheoretical traditions informing this practice. In developing myown understanding of practice, I have drawn on diverse intellec-tual traditions in the effort to get adult learners and adult educa-tors to recognize, research, and challenge their assumptions. Assomeone who is very interested in practice, and who loves to tryand untangle pedagogic problems and puzzles, I have usually writ-ten for educators who share this passion. My intuition is that peo-ple who buy my books are mostly looking for helpful suggestionson how to create and conduct adult and higher educational activ-ities. Over the years I have received much confirmation of thatintuition from people who liked the practicality of some of my ear-lier books.

But now I have the chance to talk some theory. In The Power ofCritical Theory for Adult Learning and Teaching I take the opportunityto fill in some of the theoretical background to my earlier work byoutlining one of the chief theoretical traditions informing the ideasof critical thinking and critical reflection. I am far from agreeing witheverything that critical theory or every critical theorist says; indeed,critical theory’s emphasis on critiquing its own presuppositions is oneof its features that I find most appealing. To adapt the title of one ofCornel West’s essays, “The Indispensability Yet Insufficiency of Marx-ist Theory,” critical theory is indispensable though insufficient for a

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full understanding of the critical process. However, although criticaltheory has received considerable attention in some scholarly quar-ters of adult education, it is the discourses of liberal humanism andhuman capital theory that hold sway in the wider world of practice.Critical theory remains balkanized, regarded by most adult educa-tion practitioners as the province of a few, overly theoretical, leftistintellectuals. I suspect that many in the field think it has little to dowith what they see as the “real” world of adult education as practicedin adult basic education, adult undergraduate degree completionprograms, corporate training, and so on. One intent of this book isto help alter this perception by establishing critical theory as a dom-inant and legitimate interpretive perspective in the field, one thatshould be seen as relevant and helpful by adult educators who regardthemselves as mainstream practitioners.

Any attempt to argue that critical theory can illuminate theeveryday practices of adult educators faces formidable obstacles.Critical theory has as a priority the critique of capitalism, an ide-ology viewed by many as coterminous with the best that Americastands for. Its intellectual genesis is in Marxism, a fact that is hardlylikely to endear it to the vast majority who view Marx as funda-mentally un-American. Critical theory views socialism not as repres-sive thought control or relentless subservience to totalitarianleaders but, in Fromm’s terms, as “one of the most significant, ide-alistic and moral movements of our age” (Fromm, 1956a, p. 247).In fact Habermas at one point declares that “socialism and libertyare identical” (1992a, p. 75). To put it mildly, these are not senti-ments that would receive broad support today, at least in theUnited States.

Opponents of critical theory have effectively equated socialismwith state totalitarianism, in which freedom of thought, individualcreativity, and disagreement with one’s leaders are all rigidly sup-pressed. Critical theory’s repeated denunciations of the evils oftotalitarian socialism go mostly unheard. Because the theoryinvolves a dialogue with Marx and because it views democracy asintertwined with socialism, it is sometimes stigmatized as a kind ofauthoritarian, Stalinist creed. From this viewpoint a critical theoristis portrayed as someone interested only in muting the vibrant colors of individuality, liberty, and freedom that comprise the

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American dream until they form a grey anonymous smudge. Hackles are raised even higher when people realize that criticaltheory even questions the idea of democratic majority rule anddares to suggest that the majority might not always be right.

Not only does critical theory have these ideological barriers toovercome before it can be taken seriously by skeptical practition-ers, it also creates barriers by its mode of communication. Manypeople, myself included, find the texts of critical theory at best com-plex and challenging, at worst impenetrable. The Power of CriticalTheory for Adult Learning and Teaching is my attempt to provide adulteducators with an accessible overview of critical theory’s centralideas without oversimplifying them. I have tried to create a point ofentry into the critical tradition that does not distort its centralthemes and that uses the words of its proponents wherever possi-ble. In trying to make my explanations of critical theory as com-prehensible as possible, I was heartened by Angela Davis’ and bellhooks’ insistence that a theory can hardly inspire action if it isexpressed in terms that only a few highly trained scholars canunderstand. However, I know that there are dangers in trying towrite in accessible and comprehensible ways. One can sometimesbe so concerned with making things accessible that the power andcomplexity of the original analysis is lost. It is also possible to endup speaking too much for people rather than letting them speakfor themselves.

To try and avoid these dangers of neutering the powerful workof the theorists discussed and of diminishing their voices, I have usedas many direct quotes as possible drawn from the theorists’ works.Some readers will probably find this off-putting and wish that I’d justgive my own summary of key concepts. But I believe that past a cer-tain point it is intellectually dangerous to summarize another’s ideas.So I have erred in favor of quoting too much from original textsrather than quoting too little. I do not want readers to leave any ofthe book’s chapters without having read a large number of directquotes from the works of the authors reviewed. In this endeavor Iwas encouraged by recent books interpreting the work of Marx,Gramsci, Freire, and Habermas for adult educators written by Allman (2000, 2001) and Morrow and Torres (2002). I agree withMorrow and Torres that critical theorists “have suffered from sim-plistic, selective interpretations—whether by critics or friends”

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(2002, p. 16) and that it is important “to rather meticulously recon-struct their positions in their own terminology with direct quotes,rather than relying primarily on our interpretation of what theymean” (2002, p. 16).

Organization of the BookThe book begins with a discussion in Chapter One of some of thecentral ideas of critical theory. It lays out why reading critical the-ory is important, examines different interpretations of criticality,and positions critical theory as a response to Marx. Drawing onMax Horkheimer’s classic text “Critical Theory” (1995), ChapterOne reviews five characteristics of critical theory then argues that acritical theory of adult learning must focus on exploring a numberof learning tasks and on implementing a self-critical posture. Anoverview of these different learning tasks follows in Chapter Two.Here I argue that a critical theory of adult learning must focus onunderstanding how adults learn to challenge ideology, contesthegemony, unmask power, overcome alienation, learn liberation,reclaim reason, and practice democracy. Each of these tasks thenbecomes the focus of one of the succeeding chapters in the book.

The first of these tasks—challenging ideology—is the focus ofChapter Three. This chapter argues that ideology is the central con-cept in critical theory and establishes ideology critique as a majoradult learning project. It reviews classic statements by Adorno,Horkheimer, and Althusser on how ideology functions but also ex-amines ethnographic studies of how people resist ideological condi-tioning. Chapter Four looks at the idea of hegemony, a concept thatemphasizes that adults are active learners of ideology and willing part-ners in their own oppression. It explores the work of Antonio Gram-sci, in particular his analysis of how people learn critical consciousnessand his concept of the organic intellectual. The chapter concludeswith a brief review of some contemporary attempts by adult educa-tors to work as directive persuaders and organizers, a formulationGramsci used to describe the role of the organic intellectual.

The phenomenon of power is the focus of Chapter Five, andthe work of Michel Foucault receives particular attention. Foucaultargued that power is exercised in all social situations (includingadult education) and that it is inextricably intertwined with the

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ability to define what counts as knowledge. His ideas on discipli-nary power, mechanisms of surveillance, and the establishment ofregimes of truth are applied in a number of adult education con-texts. Chapter Six explores the notion of alienation, particularlythrough Erich Fromm’s descriptions of twentieth-century life.Fromm broadened Marx’s analysis to argue that alienation is a uni-versal phenomenon that extends far beyond the industrial work-ing class. Contemporary forms of alienation are evident in the waysadults develop a “marketing orientation” to life and see the devel-opment of identity as equivalent to assembling and marketing anattractive “personality package.” Fromm also chronicles the declineof critical thinking as people succumb to “automaton conformity”and engage in pseudothinking; that is, thinking that uncriticallyespouses what people imagine the majority opinion to be. Thechapter ends by reviewing Fromm’s ideas on how adult educatorscan combat these tendencies by teaching a “structuralized world-view” and helping people learn habits of democratic process.

In Chapter Seven we encounter the idea of one-dimensionalthought as articulated by Herbert Marcuse. Adults exhibit one-dimensional thought when their learning is focused on how to makecurrent systems work more efficiently, rather than asking “big” ques-tions such as How should we live? or What does it mean to act eth-ically? As a practicing educator, Marcuse suggests several specificways adult educators can help people escape one-dimensionalthought. One is through providing opportunities for people to havepowerful and estranging aesthetic engagements. Marcuse believesin the transformative power of art and argues that it can temporar-ily take people out of everyday reality and then allow them to reen-ter it with a newly critical perspective. Another possibility is to teachabstract, conceptual thought, which Marcuse regards as a poten-tially revolutionary form of cognition. A third is to practice liberat-ing tolerance, an approach that involves exposing learners only toalternative and dissenting perspectives. Marcuse contrasts liberat-ing tolerance with repressive tolerance, which appears to open upcurricula while actually closing them down. Applying his idea of“repressive tolerance” to contemporary diversity initiatives suggeststhat these only serve to underscore the dominance of the Euro-centric center.

Chapters Eight and Nine review the relevance of Jürgen Haber-

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mas for adult education practice. Habermas is probably the criticaltheorist best known to adult educators, and his work has signifi-cantly influenced debates on transformative learning. I divide hiswork into two different projects—reclaiming reason and practicingdemocracy. Chapter Eight explores how reason can help us face thethree crises Habermas believes are undermining democracy:the collapse of the public sphere, the decline of civil society, and theinvasion of the lifeworld. Habermas believes that true reason—reason employed to build participatory democracy—can help uslearn our way out of these crises. In Chapter Nine I examine fur-ther his views on the similarities between democratic processes andparticular speech forms. It is Habermas’ contention that adults areconstantly learning what he calls “communicative action,” and thatthis form of communication carries within it a democratic impulse.The chapter also includes a summary of his ideas on the develop-ment of adult moral consciousness and his description of the roleof adult learning in social evolution.

Chapters Ten and Eleven turn a critical eye on the work sum-marized in Chapters One through Nine. These first nine chaptersundoubtedly reflect a Eurocentric perspective, and they empha-size class as a central construct. In Chapters Ten and Eleven Ireview the central contentions of critical theory through the con-temporary lenses of race and gender. Chapter Ten takes LuciusOutlaw’s idea that bodies of knowledge are always racialized andexplores how adult education literature is racialized in favor ofEuropean White males such as myself. Two ways in which the fieldcould be racialized in favor of African Americans are then ex-plored. The first option focuses on African American attempts totake the critical theory tradition and rework some of its centralideas so that they serve the interests of African Americans. LuciusOutlaw and Cornel West are particularly prominent here. The sec-ond option is to develop an Africentric paradigm for adult educa-tion that conceptualizes its practice in terms of African culturalvalues. Here the work of Scipio J. Colin III is at the forefront.

Chapter Eleven focuses on the masculinist emphasis in criticaltheory and the lack of any sustained gender analysis. It begins withthe attempts of mostly White feminists to build on the work ofMarx, Foucault, and Habermas by broadening the analysis of ide-ology to include patriarchy and gender oppression. One educa-tional implementation of critical theory—critical pedagogy—has

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been critiqued as a strongly masculinist discourse, and that per-spective is summarized here. The chapter concludes with a reviewof the work of two African American feminists, bell hooks andAngela Davis. These two writers share some similarities. Both cri-tique the attempted domination of feminist discourse by Whitewomen, both draw explicitly on the critical theory tradition, bothargue for multiracial and cross-gender alliances, and both arguethat for theory to have any effect it must be written accessibly.Some of hooks’ classroom practices are described, and it becomesclear that many of these challenge conventional adult educationalwisdom. The chapter ends by summarizing Angela Davis’ assertionsthat any analysis of women’s issues must always be tied to a critiqueof capitalism and that truly transformative adult education can onlyhappen through collective struggle and multiracial alliances.

Chapter Twelve changes the tone and focus of the book some-what by reviewing adult educational practices rather than theoret-ical analyses. It begins with a brief statement of what it means toteach critically, then moves into a discussion of the differentmethodological approaches suggested by different critical theorists.The chapter ends with a personal reflection on my own attempts toteach critical theory and the resistance this often occasions.

AcknowledgmentsReading unpublished work for no reason other than a desire tohelp the author is an act of true colleagueship. I was lucky to findsome true colleagues who spent considerable time reading draftchapters of this book and giving me their critiques. So, in alpha-betical order, let me thank Gary Cale of Jackson Community Col-lege (Jackson, Michigan), Tom Heaney of National Louis University(Chicago), Jack Mezirow, professor emeritus of Teachers College(New York), Stephen Preskill of the University of New Mexico, andMichael Welton recently of Mount Saint Vincent University (Halifax,Nova Scotia). All these colleagues read a large part of the first draftof this book and their suggestions, critiques, and encouragementwere essential to its completion. I can only hope that some time inthe future I have the chance to repay my debt to them. Cornel Westof Princeton University, Robert Kegan of Harvard University, andMark Tennant of the University of Technology, Sydney (Australia),were all kind enough to read the completed manuscript and en-

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dorse its publication. I would also like to thank Nadira Charaniyaof Springfield College (Massachusetts) and Elizabeth Hayes of theUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison who reviewed the text for Jossey-Bass and made many useful suggestions.

In addition, four other colleagues helped me develop specificchapters in the text. Scipio J. Colin III of National Louis University(Chicago) provided a supportive critique of Chapter Ten, “Racializ-ing Criticality.” Gabriele Stroschen of De Paul University (Chicago)read and critiqued Chapter Six, “Overcoming Alienation.” JohnHolst of the University of St. Thomas gave me some good ideasregarding the flow of Chapter Four, “Contesting Hegemony.” Eliza-beth Tisdell of Pennsylvania State University helpfully reviewed thetheoretical base for Chapter Eleven, “Gendering Criticality.”

Two of the doctoral students in my course “Critical Theory andthe Practice of Adult Education” at Harvard University GraduateSchool of Education kept telling me this would be a helpful and nec-essary book. Susan Klimczak and Chris Lanier read and commentedon several early drafts of the books’ chapters and reinforced my com-mitment to finishing it. So thanks to them for their encouragement.Conversations with Kevin Sealey of Teachers College, Columbia Uni-versity, moved forward my engagement with Cornel West’s work, con-tained mostly within Chapter Ten. Of course, all these colleaguesshould be excused any responsibility for the inaccuracies, inconsis-tencies, and omissions that are in here. I claim those for myself.

The writing of The Power of Critical Theory For Adult Learning andTeaching was helped considerably by the University of St. Thomasallowing me to split my sabbatical year over two consecutive springsemesters. This allowed me to write a first draft in spring 2003, fieldtest it with various groups of students in fall 2003, and then com-pletely revise and rewrite a second draft in spring 2004. SusanAlexander, Pam Nice, Rob Riley, and Miriam Williams were all sup-portive of this novel idea of a “split” sabbatical. I would also like tothank the following journals for allowing me to publish mythoughts in progress in the form of articles within their pages:Adult Education Quarterly, the Canadian Journal for the Study of AdultEducation, the Harvard Educational Review, Teachers College Record,and the Journal of Transformative Education. David Brightman, myeditor at Jossey-Bass was, as ever, an unfailing source of support andconstructive critique.

Finally, thanks to Kim, Molly, and Colin (the 99ers) for everything.

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Contents

Preface viiThe Author xvii

1 Exploring the Meaning of Critical Theoryfor Adult Learning 1

2 The Learning Tasks of Critical Theory 393 Challenging Ideology 664 Contesting Hegemony 945 Unmasking Power 1186 Overcoming Alienation 1497 Learning Liberation 1828 Reclaiming Reason 2209 Learning Democracy 248

10 Racializing Criticality 27511 Gendering Criticality 31212 Teaching Critically 352

References 377Name Index 399Subject Index 404

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Chapter One

Exploring the Meaningof Critical Theoryfor Adult Learning

Theory is a dangerous word, one that should not be used lightly.Acting on what they believe are accurate theories of human natureor political development, people have started wars, committed mur-der, and sanctioned torture. As Zinn (1990) observes, “How wethink is . . . a matter of life and death” (p. 2). Sometimes those whouse the word theory give off a whiff of self-importance, as if tellingthe reader “look out, here comes something truly profound.” MontyPython’s Flying Circus hilariously parodied the theorist’s tendencyto portentousness in a skit involving John Cleese as Miss Anne Elk,the proud possessor of a new theory concerning the brontosaurus.After archly and repeatedly declaring to a TV interviewer that shehas her very own theory, Miss Elk reveals (after considerable coax-ing by Graham Chapman the interviewer) the substance of the the-ory: the brontosaurus was thin at one end, much, much thicker inthe middle, and then thin at the other end. The sketch ends withMiss Elk trying in vain to disclose her second theory.

It is not only the Monty Python team that mocks the pretensionsof theorists. Given what theorists see as the contextual, splinterednature of reality, postmodern analysis views large-scale theory gen-eration as a naïve and self-deluding modernist project, as so muchwasted effort. Postmodernism contends that the world is essentiallyfragmented and that what passes for theoretical generalizations arereally only context-specific insights produced by particular discoursecommunities. Academics aware of this critique who are leery about

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appearing out of date are tempted to abandon any attempt even tospeak or write the word theory. After all, if everything is local, particu-lar, idiosyncratic, then isn’t trying to build generalizable theories awaste of time? That I wrote this book means, obviously, that I believethe answer to this question is “not really” and that any abandonmentof theory is premature. But a book with a focus on theoretical expec-tation must begin by outlining how the author understands this activ-ity and by justifying why this is still a worthwhile effort rather than acomedic diversion. That is this chapter’s intent.

What Is Theory?If you have the temerity to title a book The Power of Critical TheoryFor Adult Learning and Teaching, you may create in some readers theexpectation that a comprehensive explanatory framework account-ing for all aspects of adult learning will spring forth. I want tocounter this expectation at the outset. What I am trying to do isreview one particular theoretical framework—critical theory—andexplore the implications this work has for our understanding ofadult learning and the practice of adult education. Inevitably, infocusing on one tradition, others are discounted. The critical the-ory tradition draws on Marxist scholarship to illuminate the waysin which people accept as normal a world characterized by massiveinequities and the systemic exploitation of the many by the few.For adult educators the tradition helps us understand how peoplelearn to perceive and challenge this situation. A critical approachto understanding adult learning sees it as comprising a number ofcrucial tasks such as learning how to perceive and challenge dom-inant ideology, unmask power, contest hegemony, overcome alien-ation, pursue liberation, reclaim reason, and practice democracy. Atheoretical tradition concerned primarily with learning critical con-sciousness will obviously neglect some kinds of instrumental ortechnical learning. A critical theory of adult learning may strive tobe as comprehensive as possible in describing and explaining thedevelopment of social and political awareness, but it should not beexpected to account for the full range of learning activities evidentin adults.

I also want to warn against the unjustified valorization or reifi-cation of theory, against the idea that theorizing is a high-status

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intellectual process restricted to a talented few. Theorizing shouldnot be thought of as a process restricted to the academy and thepreserve of the intelligentsia, but rather as an inevitability of sen-tient existence. A theory is nothing more (or less) than a set of ex-planatory understandings that help us make sense of some aspectof the world. To the extent that making sense of existence is a nat-ural human activity, it is accurate to say that we are all theorists andthat we all theorize; in Gramsci’s (1971, p. 9) terms, “all men areintellectuals” (he would surely say “all people” were he writing today).Interpreting, predicting, explaining, and making meaning are actswe engage in whether or not we set out deliberately to do so, orwhether or not we use these terms to describe what we’re doing.

So theory is not the preserve of university professors who dis-seminate it in refereed journals and scholarly monographs. It isproduced and abandoned, refined and discarded, through every-day conversations, whether these are spoken or written, live orasynchronous. To quote Gramsci (1971) again, each person is atheorist because she or he “participates in a particular conceptionof the world, has a conscious line of moral conduct, and thereforecontributes to sustain a conception of the world or to modify it,that is to bring into being new modes of thought” (p. 9). Thinkingthis way challenges the idea of theory as a restrictive professionaldiscourse, the understanding of which requires specialist trainingin the philosophy and methodology of science. Although theoriz-ing in the natural and social sciences can be richly elaborate andsophisticated requiring the development of specialized terminol-ogy, its difference from the quotidian theorizing of everyday actionis one of degree, not of kind.

Theory can be more or less formal, wider or deeper in scope,and expressed in a range of ways, but its basic thrust—to make senseof the world, communicate that understanding to others, andthereby enable us to take informed action—stays constant. Theoryis eminently practical. Our actions as people, and as educators, areoften based on understandings we hold about how the world works.The more deliberate and intentional an action is, the more likely itis to be theoretical. To this extent theory is inherently teleological;that is, it imbues human actions with purpose. We act in certain waysbecause we believe this will lead to predictable consequences. Ofcourse, our theory can be bad or wrong—inaccurate and assimilated

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uncritically from authority figures. We can act on understandingsthat consistently lead us into harmful situations yet remain com-mitted to our theory because we are convinced we haven’t under-stood it or its implications properly. But always in the midst ofpractice, of action, of judgment and decision, is theory.

The Utility of TheoryIn an eloquent passage in Teaching to Transgress (1994), bell hookstestifies to the way theory saved her life. In describing her need tomake sense of her own family’s dynamics, she writes, “I came to the-ory because I was hurting—the pain within me was so intense thatI could not go on living. I came to theory desperate, wanting tocomprehend—to grasp what was happening around and withinme. Most importantly, I wanted to make the hurt go away. I saw intheory then a location for healing” (p. 59). In his review of criticaltheory and poststructuralism, Poster (1989) too notes that “criti-cal theory springs from an assumption that we live amidst a worldof pain, that much can be done to alleviate that pain, and that the-ory has a crucial role to play in that process” (p. 3). Both hooksand Poster demonstrate the utilitarian base to much theorizing, inthis case the alleviation of pain. Theorizing—generating provi-sional explanations that help us understand and act in the world—helps us breathe clearly when we feel stifled by the smog ofconfusion. We theorize so we can understand what’s happening tous and so that we can take informed actions. Our hope is that wecan justify the time spent theorizing by developing insights that willbe useful to us. The everyday theories of action that frame ourpractice as adult educators are highly functional. They are not usu-ally developed for their intellectual elegance or enduring concep-tual beauty; indeed, they are brutally abandoned when they ceaseto be helpful to us. If they’re useful we keep them, if they’re notwe dump them.

How exactly might we judge the utility of a critical theory ofadult learning? In other words, what leads us to keep it or dumpit? Three considerations suggest themselves. First, a theory is use-ful if it helps explain a piece of the world to us. This explanationwill probably be provisional and replaced at a later date by one thatseems even more accurate, that accounts for unresolved contra-


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dictions and complexities, and that covers a greater range of in-stances. From this point of view, theorizing is a form of meaningmaking, born of a desire to create explanations that impose con-ceptual order on reality, however artificial this order might laterturn out to be. There is a direct connection here to Mezirow’s(1991a) work on transformative learning which posits a develop-mental trajectory of adult meaning making as people develop mean-ing perspectives (broad frames of reference that shape how we seethe world) that are increasingly comprehensive and discriminating.So a theory is useful to the extent that it provides us with under-standings that illuminate what we observe and experience.

Clearly, just getting a better sense of why things are the way theyare is often helpful. Even if we realize that our problems are reflec-tions of structural contradictions that we can do little about individ-ually, knowing that we are not their cause is crucial to our well-being.One of the earliest myths educators, including adult educators, learnis the myth that, in Britzman’s (1991) words, “everything dependson the teacher.” If we embrace this myth, then we are quick tobelieve that every time things go wrong (for example, when studentsare hostile to, or apathetic about, curriculum and learning activitiesthat we feel should animate their enthusiasm), it is because we aresomehow at fault for not being sufficiently sensitive to students’experiences and learning styles or being less than fully charismatic.When a theoretical insight concerning hegemony (the process bywhich we embrace ideas and practices that keep us enslaved) helpsus understand our practice in a new way, it often takes a great weightof potential guilt off our shoulders. There is no shame in admittingthat we need theoretical insights to help us understand how thesame destructive scenarios keep emerging in our lives, despite ourbest efforts to prevent these. Without theoretical help it is easy to fallprey to the danger of unjustified self-laceration as we fail to see howmany of our private troubles are produced by systemic constraintsand contradictions.

So reading theory helps us name or rename aspects of our ex-perience that elude or puzzle us. When we read an explanation thatinterprets a paradoxical experience in a new or more revealing way,the experience often becomes more comprehensible. As a result wefeel the world is more accessible, more open to our influence. Whensomeone else’s words illuminate or confirm a privately realized


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insight, we feel affirmed and recognized. Seeing a personal insightstated as a theoretical proposition makes us more likely to take seri-ously our own reasoning and judgments. Theory can also preventus from falling victim to the traps of relativism and isolationismthat bedevil adult educational practice. Through studying theorythat has sprung from situations and concerns outside our circle ofpractice, we gain insight into those features of our work that arecontext-specific and those that are more generic. Embedded as weare in our cultures, histories, and contexts, it is easy for us to slipinto the habit of generalizing from the particular. By offering un-familiar interpretations of familiar events, theory can jar us in aproductive way and suggest other ways of working.

Without attention to theory, we can easily remain fixated on theparticular puzzles of our own practice. Critical theory helps usunderstand that these puzzles are not necessarily procedural kinksor pedagogic tangles of our own making that we need to takeresponsibility for unraveling. Instead they are sometimes politicallysculpted situations illustrating the internal contradictions of thecapitalist system in which we work. We come to see that these situ-ations are the predictable consequence of trying to do somethinghighly complex (help adults learn) within a system that is organizedaccording to bureaucratic rationality and modes of factory pro-duction. Such a system ignores complexity and assumes, for exam-ple, that learning takes place at predictable times each week, in thesame location, and follows the rationale of a curriculum dividedinto discrete and manageable units. We come to realize, too, howthe inequities of race, class, and gender play themselves out in frontof our eyes, reflecting dynamics that seem beyond our influence.

This first criterion of theoretical utility is basically representa-tional. It springs from modernist epistemology that holds that ourminds can construct increasingly accurate pictures of the world. AsBagnall (1999) puts it, modernist epistemology is “open to an infi-nite progression of ever more perfect representations of the mate-rial world, each one more general and more powerful than that orthose it replaced, but always carrying with it the presupposition offurther fallibility” (p. 23). This epistemology has come under in-creasing attack to the extent that postmodernism scorns any at-tempts to theorize beyond the individual case as hopeless acts of


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self-deception. Nonetheless, despite postmodernist skepticismadult educators display a remarkable tenacity in their desire to the-orize and to use this theorizing to improve their practice. Indeed,one of the most frequently voiced complaints about critical decon-structions of adult educational practice is that these demonstratepractitioners’ shortcomings, particularly their oppressive behav-iors, without offering any suggestions as to how these failings mightbe addressed. Reading critiques that only leave us feeling foolish,misguided, or guilty, and that contain no hope for remaking ourpractice in more democratic ways, condemns us to nihilism or cyn-icism. In rejecting such demoralization throughout his life, it is noaccident that Paulo Freire titled one of his last texts Pedagogy ofHope (1994).

A second way a theory can be judged as useful is the extent thatit helps us understand not just how the world is but also how itmight be changed for the better. (Of course, how one defines bet-ter is framed by one’s class, culture, race, sexual preference, andideology, among other things.) One of the strongest hopes of crit-ical theory is that consideration of its understandings will promptsocial and political change, often of a revolutionary nature. As Fay(1987) puts it, “A critical theory wants to explain a social order insuch a way that it becomes itself the catalyst which leads to thetransformation of this social order” (p. 27). So as well as providingdifferent and helpful images of our practice that help us placewhat we do in wider social and political contexts, we can also askof theory that it assist us in doing good work. Given that we all haveonly so much passion and commitment to draw on (we are notinexhaustible wells of energy), we need to be as sure as we can thatsuch energy as we have is being deployed to greatest effect. This iswhat public intellectual and social critic Cornel West argues in hisdialogue with bell hooks (hooks and West, 1991). For West, theoryis “an indispensable weapon in struggle because it provides certainkinds of understanding, certain kinds of illumination, certain kindsof insights that are requisite if we are to act effectively” (hooks andWest, 1991, p. 34).

So it is reasonable to expect a critical theory of adult learningto suggest ways that adult education can contribute to building a society organized according to democratic values of fairness,


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justice, and compassion. In Horkheimer’s (1995) terms, “the issue .. . is not just the theory of emancipation; it is the practice of it as well”(p. 233). In the critical tradition, theoretical utility is judged by cri-teria that are normatively based in a philosophical vision of the good,fully emancipated society. As we shall see in the next section, thisemphasis on normative values is central to critical theory. Critical the-ory aims to help bring about a society of freedom and justice, a set of“beautiful consequences” as pragmatists might say. Consequently, wecan assess critical theory’s usefulness by judging how well it offers usguidance on the very practical matters of naming and fighting thoseenemies that are opposed to these consequences (Newman, 1994).

Third, a theory can offer us a form of radical hope that helpsus stand against the danger of energy-sapping, radical pessimism.When we start to analyze the power and persistence of dominantideologies, we can quickly reach the conclusion that there is littleanyone can do to stand against the massive twin pillars of capi-talism and bureaucratic rationality or against the monolith of themilitary-industrial complex. Knowing about the strength and per-sistence of the forces that use education to transmit dominant cul-tural values can leave us feeling puny and alone. Knowing thatchallenging dominant ideology risks bringing punishment downon our heads is depressing and frightening. It is easy to becomedemoralized when one realizes the strength of the opposition. Ascapitalism becomes truly global and exerts its influence throughmultinational corporations across state boundaries, it becomesharder and harder to envisage how citizens can stand against cap-italism’s encroachment into civil society.

This is where a critical theory of adult learning can help out-line a pedagogy of hope, one where the possibility of democratictransformation of education and society is still alive. The fact thatcritical theory and the Frankfurt School’s work exists at all, andthat it has galvanized the energies of people across the world, isevidence that the dominant ideology of capitalism is not as per-vasively stifling as we sometimes believe. If part of critical theory’spurpose is to help adults realize the ways dominant ideology limitsand circumscribes what people feel is possible in life, then raisingawareness of how this happens provides “the necessary theoreticalopening for understanding how an educative process might enablepeople to give up their illusions” (Welton, 1995, p. 13). Hence, crit-


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ical theory can be deemed effective to the extent that it keeps alivethe hope that the world can be changed to make it fairer and morecompassionate.

I don’t want to suggest, however, that for a theory to be usefulit must generate neatly encapsulated formulations and implicationsfor practice—standardized models, techniques, and approachesthat can be easily applied across adult educational contexts. AsShalin (1992) wryly observes, “Things themselves do not suffer the-ory gladly and are sure to spoil our best faith efforts” (p. 268). Per-haps the most we can reasonably hope for is that those whounderstand their work through the lens of critical theory mightdocument publicly the ways this understanding shapes, or at leastinfluences, that work. An exemplar in this regard is Ira Shor, whohas consistently outlined how his own practice of critical pedagogyis built upon the critical theory tradition in general and thethought of Paulo Freire in particular.

In a series of finely written books (1987a, 1992, 1996), Shoroffers compelling yet highly practical images of educational prac-tice that have inspired many to experiment with differentapproaches in their own work (Shor, 1987b; Shor and Pari, 1999,2000). His vignettes of apathetic students, rundown premises,learners’ hostility to participatory approaches, and teachers’depression in the face of these factors are immediately recogniz-able to any educator who has tried to act on the insights of criticaltheory. In describing his responses to these vignettes, Shor providesnumerous helpful suggestions that are rich in context-specific, illus-trative detail, with no implication that these should be copied orreproduced. Yet the creativity he displays probably encouragesmany readers to break with their own tried and tested ways ofdoing things and serves as a point of departure for some usefulexperimentation. One concrete example of this in graduate adulteducation is the attempt by students and faculty at National LouisUniversity in Chicago to create a democratic doctorate in adulteducation, drawing explicitly on some of Shor’s suggestions (Avilaand others, 2000).

In a review of several adult educational texts on teaching prac-tices, Hayes (1993) opines that “it has always seemed to me some-what unreasonable to expect teachers to tackle the formidable taskof empowerment with few concrete tools” (p. 183). I agree with


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her sentiments. Whilst I support theorists’ reluctance to prescribestandardized responses to complex, contradictory, and politicallysculpted situations, I don’t believe that those who write about the-ory can just throw up their hands and say, “Sorry, don’t look to usfor help in responding to these problems. Our job is done oncewe’ve analyzed them.” To turn one’s back on matters of practiceand separate these from theoretical analysis is a denial of the ideaof praxis—the constant intersection of opposites such as analysisand action—that is so central to the critical theory tradition.

I have always felt it is a cop-out to refuse to discuss adult educa-tional practice, particularly when one’s analysis derives from an intel-lectual tradition that says the point of understanding the world is tobe able to change it. After all, critical theory and its contemporaryeducational applications such as critical pedagogy are grounded inan activist desire to fight oppression, injustice, and bigotry and cre-ate a fairer, more compassionate world. Central to this tradition is aconcern with highly practical projects—the practice of penetratingideology, countering hegemony, and working democratically. Giventhat luminaries in the critical canon such as Gramsci were more than ready to describe in great detail the specifics of revolutionarystrategy (for example, the creation and functioning of the factorycouncil organization), it is surprising that such a deep suspicion ofdocumenting practice (while not reifying it) has crept into adulteducational interpretations of critical theory.

A refusal by theorists to dirty their hands with the specifics ofpractice is epistemologically untenable. Like it or not, we are all the-orists and our formal and informal theories of practice inevitablyframe how we approach helping adults learn. Conversely, our the-oretical quests are usually initiated by our desires to explain andresolve the practical contradictions and tangles that consume ourenergies. The formal theory that appears in books and journals maybe a more codified, regulated, and abstracted form of thinkingabout general problems, but it is not different in kind from theunderstandings embedded in our own local decisions and actions.

The Meaning of Criticality in Critical TheoryThis is a book not just about theory but about a particular type oftheory—critical theory. This takes us into deep waters indeed, since


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the term critical is deeply perverse in the plurality of connotationsand interpretations (some of them contradictory) it provokes.Nonetheless, what this book is trying to do is explore a theory ofadult learning that could be described as critical. Obviously, then,I need to explain exactly what this term means.

Criticality is a contested idea, one with a variety of meaningseach claimed by different groups for very different purposes. Howthe term critical is used inevitably reflects the ideology and world-view of the user. As an example, consider the different ways peo-ple understand what it means to learn in a critical way at theworkplace. Following the work of Argyris (1982), critical learning,thinking, and reflection are represented by executives’ use of lat-eral, divergent thinking strategies and double loop learning meth-ods. Here adult workers are deemed to learn critically when theyexamine the assumptions that govern business decisions by check-ing whether or not these decisions are grounded in an accuratelyassessed view of market realities. Inferential ladders are scrutinizedfor the false rungs that lead business teams into, for example, a dis-astrous choice regarding the way in which a brand image upsets acertain group of potential customers. The consequence of this ex-ercise in critical thought is an increase in profits and productivity,and a decrease in industrial sabotage and worker absenteeism.Capitalism is left unchallenged as more creative or humanistic waysare found to organize production or sell services. The free marketis infused with a social democratic warmth that curtails its worstexcesses. The ideological and structural premises of the capitalistworkplace remain intact.

For others, critical learning in a business setting cannot occurwithout an explicit critique of capitalism (Collins, 1991; Simon,Dippo, and Schenke, 1991; Mojab and Gorman, 2003). This kind ofcritical learning at the workplace involves workers fighting theimmoral practice of relocating plants to countries where pollutioncontrols are much looser, unions are banned, and labor is muchcheaper. It challenges the demonizing of union members as corruptStalinist obstructionists engaged in a consistent misuse of power andexplores the conditions under which successful organizing takesplace. It investigates the ways in which profits are distributed and theconditions under which those profits are generated. It points outand queries the legitimation of capitalist ideology through changes


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in language; for example, the creeping and ever more widespreaduse of phrases such as “buying into” or “creating ownership” of anidea, the description of students as “customers,” or the use of eu-phemisms such as “downsizing” or worse, “rightsizing” (with itsimplication that firing people restores some sort of natural eco-logical balance to the market) to soften and make palatable thereality of people losing their livelihoods, homes, marriages, self-respect, and hope.

In critical theory terms, the workplace is transformed whencooperative democracy and worker control replace the distribu-tion of profits among shareholders and when workplace learningfocuses on the worker’s exercise of her creative capacities in termsshe herself defines. In Horkheimer’s (1995) words, “Critical think-ing . . . is motivated today by the effort to abolish the oppositionbetween the individual’s purposefulness, spontaneity, and ratio-nality, and those work-process relationships on which society isbuilt” (p. 210). The factory councils in Turin, the Clydeside Ship-building (Scotland) sit-in, the 1968 occupation of the Renault fac-tory outside Paris—these would be examples of workplace learningin this perspective.

How is it that the same term can be used to refer to such dif-ferent activities? To understand the concept of criticality properlywe need to disentangle the different, and often conflicting, intel-lectual traditions informing its use. Four predominant traditionsinform criticality: ideology critique as seen in neo-Marxism and thework of the Frankfurt School of Critical Social Theory (the primarytradition examined in this book), psychoanalysis and psychother-apy, analytic philosophy and logic, and pragmatist constructivism.

Four Traditions of CriticalityIn a provocative essay, “Making Critical Thinking Critical,” Kinch-eloe (2000) argues that the political and ethical dimensions inte-gral to criticality have been forgotten in contemporary programsof critical thinking. To him, criticality is grounded in the work ofthe Frankfurt School of Critical Social Theory and the ideas ofAdorno (1973), Horkheimer (1974, 1995), and Marcuse (1964).Critical thinking is really “the ability of individuals to disengagethemselves from the tacit assumptions of discursive practices and


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power relations in order to exert more conscious control over theireveryday lives” (p. 24). This kind of critical distancing from, andthen oppositional reengagement with, the dominant culture is thecentral learning task of adulthood, according to the FrankfurtSchool, who used the term ideology critique to describe this activity.When I talk of criticality and critical theory in this book, it is the ide-ology critique tradition I am chiefly invoking. As a learning process,ideology critique describes the ways in which people learn to recog-nize how uncritically accepted and unjust dominant ideologies areembedded in everyday situations and practices. As an educationalactivity, ideology critique focuses on helping people come to anawareness of how capitalism shapes social relations and imposes—often without our knowledge—belief systems and assumptions (thatis, ideologies) that justify and maintain economic and politicalinequity.

An important element in the ideology critique tradition is theconcept of hegemony which explains the way in which people areconvinced to embrace dominant ideologies as always being in theirown best interests. One of the theorists of hegemony, Antonio Gram-sci, points out that because people learn hegemonic values, ideas,and practices, and because schools and other cultural institutionsplay a major role in presenting these ideas as the natural order ofthings, hegemony must always be understood as an educational phe-nomenon. For Jack Mezirow—probably the most influential con-temporary theorist of adult learning—doing ideology critique isequivalent to what he calls “systemic” critical reflection that focuseson probing sociocultural distortions (Mezirow, 1991b). Mezirowargues that ideology critique is appropriate for critical reflection onexternal ideologies such as communism, capitalism, or fascism orfor reflection on our own “economic, ecological, educational, lin-guistic, political, religious, bureaucratic, or other taken-for-grantedcultural systems” (Mezirow, 1998, p. 193). Ideology critique containswithin it the promise of social transformation and frames the workof influential activist adult educators such as Freire, Tawney,Williams, Horton, Coady, and Tomkins.

A second more psychoanalytically and psychotherapeutically in-clined tradition emphasizes criticality in adulthood as the identifi-cation and reappraisal of inhibitions acquired in childhood as aresult of various traumas. Mezirow (1981) writes of “the emancipa-


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tory process of becoming critically aware of how and why the struc-ture of psycho-cultural assumptions has come to constrain the waywe see ourselves and our relationships” (p. 6). Using the frameworkof transformative learning, theorists like Gould (1990) emphasizethe process whereby adults come to realize how childhood inhibi-tions serve to frustrate them from realizing their full developmentas persons. This realization is the first step to slaying these inhibit-ing demons, laying them to rest, and living in a more integrated,authentic manner.

Different theorists emphasize variously the extent to which thedevelopment of new social structures is a precondition of a newlyconstituted, integrated personality. Carl Rogers (1961), for exam-ple, sees significant personal learning and personal developmentas occurring through individual and group therapy and does notaddress wider political factors—an omission he regretted in his lastbook, A Way of Being (Rogers, 1980). Others, such as Erich Fromm(1941) and Ronald Laing (1960), argue that personality is sociallyand politically sculpted. These theorists view schizophrenia andmental illness as socially produced phenomena representing theinternal contradictions of capitalism. To them the rise of totalitar-ian and fascist regimes is made possible by the way ideologies struc-ture personality types that yearn for order, predictability, andexternally imposed controls. This tradition is also clearly present inMezirow’s (1991a) groundbreaking theoretical work. To radical psy-chologists such as Laing and neo-Marxists like Fromm, individualand social transformation cannot be separated. For the personalityto be reconstituted, insane and inhumane social forms need to bereplaced by congenial social and economic structures, and the con-tradictions of capitalism need to be reconciled. In Marx’s Concept ofMan (1961), Fromm argues that the young Marx was convincedthat the chief benefit of socialist revolution would be the transfor-mation of the personality, the creation of a new kind of humani-tarian citizen.

A third tradition shaping how criticality is thought and spokenabout is that of analytic philosophy and logic. Here learning to becritical describes the process by which we become more skillful inargument analysis. In this tradition we act critically when we rec-ognize logical fallacies, when we distinguish between bias and fact,


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opinion and evidence, uninformed judgment and valid inference,and when we become skilled at using different forms of reasoning(inductive, deductive, analogical, and so on). This tradition is oftenvery much in evidence in texts on critical thinking (Stice, 1987;Norris and Ennis, 1989) the intent of which is to improve skills ofanalysis and argument disconnected from any particular ideolog-ical critique. In Wittgenstein’s (1953) terms, social relations areunderstood as word games, and social understanding involvesunpacking the multiple meanings and uses of language. Socialaction in this tradition is akin to participating in speech acts(Searle, 1969). Two British adult educators working in this tradi-tion—Kenneth Lawson (1975) and Ralph Patterson (1979)—haveproduced provocative deconstructions of the concepts of adultlearning, adulthood, and adult education. This tradition’s concernfor linguistic analysis as the defining characteristic of critical think-ing seems, on the surface, far removed from Horkheimer’s (1995)contention that “the critical attitude . . . is wholly distrustful of therules of conduct with which society as presently constituted pro-vides each of its members” (p. 207).

Finally, a fourth tradition that many invoke when defining criti-cality is that of pragmatist constructivism. This tradition emphasizesthe way people learn how to construct and deconstruct their ownexperiences and meanings. Constructivism rejects universals and gen-eralizable truths and focuses instead on the variability of how peoplemake interpretations of their experience. This strand of thoughtmaintains that events happen to us but that experiences are con-structed by us. Pragmatism emphasizes the importance of continu-ous experimentation to bring about better (in pragmatist terms,more beautiful) social forms. It argues that in building a democraticsociety we experiment, change, and discover our own and others’ fal-libility.

Democracy is the political form embraced by pragmatism sinceit fosters experimentation with diversity. Cherryholmes (1999) writesthat “pragmatism requires democracy” since “social openness, inclu-siveness, tolerance, and experimentation generate more outcomesthan closed, exclusive, and intolerant deliberations” (p. 39). Elementsof these two traditions are evident in parts of John Dewey’s (1938)work and they have filtered, via the work of Eduard Lindeman


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([1926] 1961), into adult education’s concern with helping peopleunderstand their experience and with the field’s preference for expe-riential methods. In Myles Horton’s (1990) renowned work at High-lander Folk School, a largely constructivist approach was allied witha tradition of ideology critique to help activists realize that their ownexperience—properly analyzed in a collaborative but critical way—could be an invaluable resource in their fight for social justice.

My own understanding of criticality draws on all these tradi-tions, but the first of these—ideology critique—is undoubtedly themost prominent. However, I also believe that it is possible to arguea concept of criticality that blends elements of pragmatism into thecritical theory traditions. This stance, which might be called criti-cal pragmatism, is one that accepts the essential accuracy and use-fulness of the reading of society embedded within ideologycritique. It also allies itself with the struggle to create a world inwhich one’s race, class, and gender do not frame the limits withinwhich one can experience life. However, it is also skeptical of anyclaims to foundationalism or essentialism; that is, to the belief thatthere is one, and only one, way to conceive of and create such asociety.

This fusion of critical theory and pragmatism is not to every-one’s taste. Indeed, several of those associated with the critical tra-dition reject entirely the idea that pragmatism has any liberatorydimension. In his introduction to a reissued volume ofHorkheimer’s (1995) essays, Stanley Aronowitz condemns prag-matism as subversive of, and antithetical to, social and political cri-tique, describing it as “the theory of nontheory” and claiming that“it leaves no room for critical theory” (pp. xv–xvi). In Eclipse of Rea-son ([1947] 1974), Horkheimer himself denounced pragmatism asa form of scientism that put all its faith in improvement throughsystematic experimentation and therefore represented the intel-lectual “counterpart of modern industrialism” (p. 50). The resultof pragmatism’s focus on the experimental improvement of con-temporary conditions meant that “speculative thought is altogetherliquidated” (p. 103). Gramsci (1971) too regarded pragmatism’sfocus on practice as undertheorized and inherently conservative,leading “to the justification of conservative and reactionary move-ments” (p. 373).


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I believe, however, that the pragmatic tradition is not as destruc-tive to criticality as Horkheimer, Aronowitz, and Gramsci argue. Ifwe conceive of pragmatism as the flexible pursuit of beautiful con-sequences, it is reasonable to argue that the most beautiful socialconsequences of all are those of freedom and justice presupposedby Horkheimer himself as the defining necessities of critical theory(1995, pp. 230, 242). Taking a pragmatic slant on critical theory ar-gues for a defensible flexibility regarding ways these values mightbe realized and encourages a self-critical, self-referential stance(claimed by some as integral to the critical tradition). It also re-affirms the creation of democratic forms of life as the central proj-ect of theory.

The concern to democratize production to serve the wholecommunity and the desire to reconfigure the workplace as a sitefor the exercise of human creativity are the meeting points for crit-ical theory and pragmatism. The contemporary critical theorist Jür-gen Habermas himself acknowledged this, arguing that his workcould be interpreted as building on American pragmatism. In a1985 interview he declared that “I have for a long time identifiedmyself with that radical democratic mentality which is present inthe best American traditions and articulated in American prag-matism” (p. 198). Shalin (1992) too argues that Habermas’ theoryof communicative action is “an attempt to invigorate critical the-ory by merging the Continental and Anglo-Saxon traditions andbringing the pragmatist perspective to bear on the project of eman-cipation through reason” (p. 244).

Perhaps the most sustained attempt to reinvent pragmatism asa critical philosophy is Cornel West’s (1999a) passionate enuncia-tion of prophetic pragmatism. The prophetic element in this phi-losophy “harks back to the Jewish and Christian traditions ofprophets who brought urgent and compassionate critique to bearon the evils of their day” (p. 171). The pragmatic element “under-stands pragmatism as a political form of cultural criticism andlocates politics in the everyday experience of ordinary people”(p. 151). West argues that “the emancipatory social experimenta-tion that sits at the center of prophetic pragmatist politics closelyresembles the radical democratic elements of Marxist theory, yet its flexibility shuns any dogmatic, a priori or monistic pro-nouncements” (pp. 151–152). For him, the twin pillars of


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prophetic pragmatism are “critical temper as a way of struggle anddemocratic faith as a way of life” (p. 186), with the pragmatist spiritensuring that the certitudes of critical theory never become rei-fied, never placed beyond healthy criticism. Despite Gramsci’srejection of pragmatism, West contends that “Gramsci exemplifiesthe critical spirit and oppositional sentiments of prophetic prag-matism” (p. 169), and he goes so far as to invoke Gramsci’s con-cept of organic intellectuals in describing prophetic pragmatists asthose who “relate ideas to action by means of creating, constitut-ing or consolidating constituencies for moral aims and politicalpurposes” (p. 146).

Marxism and Critical TheoryIn this section I want to position critical theory as part of a widerintellectual debate concerning the correct response to and updat-ing of Marxist analysis in the centuries following his death. Marxis the towering intellectual figure—simultaneously foundation andfulcrum—for the writers who fall into the category of what mostpeople now call critical theory. In several ways his work shapesmuch of the work in this tradition. Many of its most important ana-lytical categories—false consciousness, commodification, objecti-fication, alienation—are derived from Marx’s interpretations ofEnlightenment thought and his dialogue with Hegel. Wiggerhaus’(1994) massive survey of the Frankfurt School makes clear thatHorkheimer, Marcuse, and Fromm drew particularly on the “early”Marx’s critique of the alienation and diminution of humanity pro-duced by capitalism. In adult education, Habermas’ work (whichhas been so influential on Mezirow’s development of transforma-tive learning theory) is in many ways a talking back to Marx.

Yet, although Marx’s ideas undergird one strand of transfor-mative learning theory (that drawing on critical theory’s concernwith personal liberation), he is rarely mentioned in American adulteducation. Other than Holst’s (2002) analysis, no major Americantext in the field takes Marxism as its conceptual center. Perhapsthis is because American adult educators are fearful of beingbranded as subversive, communistic, overtly political, or concernedonly with sectional class interests if they invoke his name. In other


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English-speaking countries, adult educators are more ready toengage with Marx as writers such as Law (1992), Mayo (1998), Wel-ton (1995), Allman (2000, 2001), and Youngman (2000), amongstothers, demonstrate. Welton (1995) argues that “the consequencesof forgetting Marx for the construction of a critical theory of adultlearning are enormous, inevitably binding us to an individualisticmodel of learning” (p. 19).

One of the difficulties with remembering Marx is the “knee-jerk ‘marxophobia’” (McLaren, 1997, p. 172) faced by those whodraw, however critically or circumspectly, on his work. Marxopho-bia holds that even to mention Marx is to engage in un-Americanbehavior and by implication to support the genocide and repres-sion exhibited by totalitarian communist regimes throughout his-tory. Despite repeated attempts by all the Frankfurt Schooltheorists to disassociate Marxist analysis from the rigidity of statetotalitarianism, popular opinion equates Marx with repression,standardization, bureaucratization, and denial of creativity or lib-erty. One reason for this, as West (1982) points out, is the imme-diate association of Marxism with Stalinist centralization inparticular and Soviet society in general. West remarks that “it is noaccident that in American lingo Marxism is synonymous with Sovi-etism. It is as if the only Christianity that Americans were everexposed to was that of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority” (p. 139).

Yet, though critical theory can be conceived as a constant con-versation with Marx, it is not a simple replication of Marxism. AsMcLaren points out, “Many if not most critical educators work out-side the orthodox Marxian tradition and do not consider capital-ism an irrevocable evil” (McLaren, 1997, p. 172). Erich Fromm,amongst other critical theorists, pointed out that it is also possibleto find cracks and crevices in a capitalist system: “One must admitthat ‘capitalism’ is in itself a complex and constantly changing struc-ture which still permits of a good deal of non-conformity and of per-sonal latitude” (1956b, p. 132). In the critical theory tradition, it isperfectly possible to find a Marxist analysis useful without by impli-cation endorsing the Gulag or Chinese cultural revolution. Indeed,Marcuse, West, Davis, and others draw attention to the democraticimpulse in Marx, while Fromm sees Marx as concerned chiefly withspiritual liberation.


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If critical theory can be understood as a critical engagementwith Marx, then a critical theory of adult learning must begin byacknowledging the centrality of Marxist concepts. This is not thestretch it might first appear to those nervously suffering Marxo-phobia. As an example, think of the criticisms made by many con-tinuing educators in higher education to the effect that acceleratedlearning programs are used as cash cows to prop up colleges facedby sagging enrollments of traditional-aged students. By processingas many adult students as quickly as possible through the institu-tion, such institutions are displaying a commodification of learn-ing. Commodification—the process by which a human quality orrelationship becomes regarded as a product, good, or commodityto be bought and sold on the open market—is a Marxist notionconnected to his other ideas of objectification, fetishization, andexchange value. It is the key concept used by Shumar in his bookCollege for Sale (1997), the subtitle of which is A Critique of the Com-modification of Higher Education. So a criticism that many mainstreamadult educators would feel very comfortable making can be tracedback to Marxist analysis.

Youngman’s (2000) analysis of adult education and develop-ment also illustrates the enduring relevance of Marxist modes ofanalysis for illuminating specific adult teaching and learning situa-tions. Early in his book he argues that “Marxist social theory . . . pro-vides a coherent foundation for comprehending adult educationand development at both the micro and micro levels of analysis”(p. 9) and supports this by demonstrating how a computing class ata private commercial college in Harare can be analyzed using toolsof class analysis, colonialism, and the development of capitalism inAfrica. The class is organized to produce the skilled labor Zimbabweneeds to compete in the global economy. The location is partly aresult of pressure from the World Bank and International Mone-tary Fund to create more private adult education organizations. Thecurricular materials are provided by an American transnational cor-poration, and participation in the class is determined by the eco-nomic situation of the learners. Relations between students in theclass and between students and the teacher are structured by pat-terns of class, race, gender, and ethnicity, which themselves reflectZimbabwe’s colonial heritage. Hence, to Youngman “the everydayactivity and experience of the adult educator and adult learners in


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this class are shaped by the wider economic and political realitiesof Zimbabwe and its place in world economy” (p. 10).

As well as providing critical theory with many of its central con-cepts, Marx also influences its forms of discourse. His alternationbetween polemic and scientism, between philosophizing about theneed to create the conditions under which people can realize theircreativity and humanity and demonstrating the immutable laws ofhistory focused on the predictable crises of capitalism, has framedthe style in which much subsequent critical theory is written. Hisgrounding of social and political analysis in the realization of anexplicit social ideal has also meant that critical theory after Marxsprings explicitly from a normative vision of the good society. In hisoften quoted eleventh thesis on Feuerbach in which he argued thatthe point of philosophy was to change the world (not just interpretit), Marx underpins the intent of critical theory to act as a catalystfor revolutionary social change. Youngman (2000) argues that thisactivism is clearly evident in “the long-standing heritage within rad-ical adult education in capitalist societies that has been based ex-plicitly on Marxist theory” (p. 33) and further maintains that “sincethe early days of Marxism there has been a close connection be-tween Marxist theory and the practice of adult education” (p. 32).As evidence of this, he cites Marx’s involvement with the GermanWorkers’ Education Association, Gramsci’s role in organizing work-ers’ factory councils of Turin, and the creation by American Marx-ist socialists of the Working People’s College in 1907.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of theUnion of Soviet Socialist Republics, many came to believe thatMarxism had been intellectually discredited. Yet Marx’s ideas refuseto disappear. In asking Why Read Marx Today? Wolff (2002) notesthat the lectures his book is based on consistently attract standing-room-only audiences. Any time someone acknowledges that societyis structured economically to favor a fortunate few, or any timesomeone observes that the rich get richer while the poor getpoorer, they are implicitly drawing on a Marxist framework. Whenthe debate about the North American Free Trade Agreement(NAFTA) rages, and critics point out how free trade across nationalboundaries chiefly allows corporations to get richer by exploitingnew markets while reducing costs through the exploitation ofcheap, non-unionized labor, Marx’s influence is present. An inter-


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esting example of his enduring influence is seen in the fact that oneof the most prominent contemporary African American thinkers,Cornel West, continues to engage with Marxist ideas (West, 1991).

Certainly, Marx’s influence hovers over the field of critical the-ory as elaborated by the Frankfurt School. Thinkers identified withthis school (such as Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, and Fromm)believed Marx’s ideas could indeed breathe vigorously on the shoresof the twentieth century, and they tried to restate and reinterpretthe meaning of those ideas for a world Marx could not foresee. Thisreframing was done in a characteristically critical way. As Jay (1973)observes, “One of the essential characteristics of critical theory fromits inception had been a refusal to consider Marxism a closed bodyof received truths” (p. 254).

This was just as well since the twentieth century was mountingmany challenges to Marxism. The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917had occurred in a predominantly rural (rather than urban) soci-ety and been a political coup d’état engineered by intellectual émi-grés rather than a mass uprising springing from the urbanproletariat as expected. Furthermore, the Russian Revolution hadnot led to a domino effect. Despite the working class being usedas cannon fodder in World War I, there had been no revolution-ary flame spontaneously combusting throughout the rest ofEurope and beyond. Those societies that purported to operateaccording to Marxist principles were transmogrifying into onescharacterized by totalitarian repression and the kind of workeralienation ascribed to capitalism. In the most advanced capitalistsocieties such as the United States, large sections of the workingclass seemed eager to enjoy the fruits of the capitalist system ratherthan destroy it. And on top of this there was the rise of fascism andNazism. Faced with these and other realities, the Frankfurt Schooltheorists took Marx’s analytical categories and tried both to cri-tique and use them as the departure point for the creation ofentirely new categories. These categories would comprise a criticaltheory of social, political, and human development for the mod-ern era.

The Frankfurt School is the shorthand descriptor for the Insti-tute of Social Research established in 1923 in Frankfurt, Germany.It attracted and sponsored work done by, amongst others, MaxHorkheimer (the Institute’s director from 1930), Erich Fromm,


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Herbert Marcuse, and Theodor Adorno (who became codirectorin 1955). As Nazism took over German life, the Institute moved toGeneva (in 1933) and then New York (in 1935). In 1953 it returnedto Frankfurt, but after Adorno and Horkheimer’s deaths (in 1969and 1973, respectively) the Institute’s distinctive intellectual proj-ect—to interpret, critique, and reframe the relevance of Marxistthought for contemporary industrial society—declined. Amongstcontemporary thinkers Jürgen Habermas (who was once Adorno’sassistant) is the most well known intellectual heir of the school’slegacy. The Frankfurt School’s work branched into two comple-mentary lines of inquiry—ideology critique and psychoanalysis—both of which were identified in the previous section as importantcontributors to the critical tradition. The first of these—ideologycritique—is the dominant tradition invoked in this book.

What Is So Critical About Critical Theory?Five Distinctive CharacteristicsHow does a critical theory differ from other kinds of theories? Thisis the key question addressed by Max Horkheimer in his classic 1937essay, “Traditional and Critical Theory” (1995), and his analysisremains pertinent today. Although Horkheimer acknowledges that critical theory contains elements of what he calls traditional(that is, positivist) theory, there are important differences. The firstof these is that critical theory is firmly grounded in a particularpolitical analysis. Hence “critical theory does not have one doctrinalsubstance today, another tomorrow” (p. 234). This is because itsprimary unit of analysis—the conflicting relationship between socialclasses within an economy based on the exchange of commodi-ties—remains stable, at least until society has been radically trans-formed. A “single existential judgment” (p. 227) is at the heart ofcritical theory. This is that the commodity exchange economy com-prising capitalism will inevitably generate a series of tensions cre-ated by the desire of some of the people for emancipation and thewish of others to prevent this desire being realized.

Horkheimer was pessimistic regarding the possibility for eman-cipation, believing that this would finally be suppressed and human-ity driven into “a new barbarism” (p. 227). However, his pessimismdid not mean that people should fall into quietism or conformism.


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Instead, he contended that the theory itself assumed that those whosubscribed to it would fight against this creeping barbarism: “Everypart of the theory presupposes the critique of the existing orderand the struggle against it along the lines determined by the the-ory itself” (p. 229). So the starting point of Horkheimer’s analysisis that the commodity exchange economy that dominates socialrelations must be reconfigured so that people can realize theirhumanity and freedom.

In the commodity exchange economy (an idea borrowed fromMarx), the dynamic of exchange—I give you this, you give me thatin return—determines all human relationships. The exchangevalue of a thing (what it’s worth in monetary terms) overshadowsits use value (its value assessed by how it helps satisfy a human needor desire). For example, the exchange value of gold (what peoplewill pay to own a gold necklace) is a socially determined phenom-enon that has little to do with its use value (which would be deter-mined by the functions it could be used for, such as producingreliable teeth fillings). The exchange value of learning to read inadulthood (how such learning will help the adult become moresuccessful in the job market) overshadows its use value (how ithelps the adult develop self-confidence, draw new meanings fromlife, and be opened to new perspectives on the world). Althoughthe use value of learning is important to adult learners and adulteducators, it is primarily the exchange value that policy makers andpurse holders consider when determining whether or not pro-grams should be funded and how they should be evaluated.

In the exchange economy, goods and products are primarilyproduced for the profit their exchange value will bring their man-ufacturers. One important dimension of the exchange economy isthe way that inanimate objects and goods become “fetishized,” touse Marx’s term. We start to think that these objects and goodscontain some innate financial value or monetary worth that hasbeen magically determined by forces beyond our recognition. Ofcourse, this worth does not exist independently inside the prod-uct. In reality it is an expression of how much someone is willingto pay for it (in exchange economy terms, what goods or moneywe will exchange to own the product).

In the exchange economy it is not only products and goods thatseem to acquire an apparently innate worth (which is really deter-


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mined by market forces). Our labor—including our intellectuallabor of learning and teaching—also becomes an object thought tohave some intrinsic value. We exchange labor for money and moneyfor goods, and in the process our labor becomes a thing, a com-modity just like the goods we exchange money for. Hence we cometo regard our labor power—our ability to work—as if it were a thingexisting outside of us, no different in kind from other goods andproducts. When the objects or commodities we exchange becomeabstract entities or things to us, existing in an apparently separateuniverse in which their worth is determined by mysterious outsideforces, this is called commodity fetishism. Because of commodityfetishism we sell our labor power—our learning—as if it were acommodity just like any other artifact. A transformative adult learn-ing experience, such as going to college and finding one’s world-view radically altered, becomes viewed by us as the pursuit of aqualification that can be exchanged for higher salary and status.

In this process a major source of our identity and sense of self-worth—our labor—is turned into an abstract object, commodified.Our relationships too become fetishized, assuming in our eyes “thephantastic form of a relationship between things” (Marx, 1973,p. 72). Hence in adult education we talk of the teaching-learningrelationship and the development of adult educational proceduresor curricula as if these existed as objects in a world located outsideour emotions or being. The role of the adult educator engaged ingood practices becomes detached from who we are as people, ourhistories and experiences. The exchange dynamic of capitalismeven invades our emotional lives. We talk of making emotionalinvestments, as if emotions were things we could float on the stockmarket of significant personal relationships. Attention and ten-derness are exchanged for sex, affection for support. Parental con-cern toward children is exchanged for the promise of being lookedafter in old age. Habermas (1987a) describes this invasion of ourpersonal lives by capitalist processes of exchange as the coloniza-tion of the lifeworld.

A second distinctive characteristic of critical theory is its concernto provide people with knowledge and understandings intended tofree them from oppression. The point of theory is to generate knowl-edge that will change, not just interpret, the world. In this way,Horkheimer argues, critical theory truly qualifies for that most


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overused of adjectives, “transformative.” There is no presuppositionof theory being distanced from social intervention or political action.On the contrary, the converse is true. Critical theory requires suchintervention. Its explicit intent is to galvanize people into replacingcapitalism with truly democratic social arrangements. One impor-tant measure of the theory’s validity, therefore, is its capacity toinspire action. In the evaluation literature, this is referred to as con-sequential validity; that is, validity that “asks for assessments of whobenefits and who is harmed by an inquiry, measurement or method”(Patton, 2002, p. 548). The knowledge the theory produces can beconsidered useful to the extent that it helps change the behavior ofits unit of analysis (people acting in society).

Geuss (1981) summarizes this view by describing critical the-ory as a “reflective theory which gives agents a kind of knowledgeinherently productive of enlightenment and emancipation” (p. 2).To Horkheimer (1995) “its goal is man’s emancipation from slav-ery” (p. 246) though he warned against a simplistic translation ofthe theory’s tenets into schemes for emancipatory action. In hisview, “philosophy must not be turned into propaganda, even forthe best possible purposes . . . philosophy is not interested in issu-ing commands” ([1947] 1974, p. 184). In terms echoing Freire’slater warnings regarding unreflective activism, Horkheimerdeclared that “action for action’s sake is in no way superior tothought for thought’s sake, and is perhaps even inferior to it”([1947] 1974, p. vi). But the fact remains that critical theory isclearly transformative and exists to bring about social change. Theresearch tradition most strongly identified with adult education—participatory research—is very much an exemplification of thisidea. Participatory researchers make no pretense to detachedobservation. Their purpose is to help adults research their com-munities with a view to changing them in directions they (the adultcitizens concerned) determine.

Horkheimer goes on to argue that a third crucial differencebetween critical theory and other kinds is that it breaks down theseparation of subject and object, of researcher and focus ofresearch, found in traditional theories. The validity of critical the-ory derives partly from the fact that its subjects—human beings,specifically those diminished by the workings of capitalism—


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support the philosophical vision of society inherent within the the-ory. The theory’s utility depends partly on people recognizing thatit expresses accurately the yearnings they have for a better moreauthentic way to live. As Geuss (1981) observes, this is clearly notthe case with positivist approaches to studying the physical, chem-ical, and biological world. Traditional scientific theory has norequirement to secure the agreement of its objects of study. Ask-ing atomic particles or types of flora whether or not they give freeassent to the accuracy of the way they are described is nonsensical.An important indicator of the validity of a critical theory of adultlearning, therefore, is the extent to which adults believe that thetheory captures their hopes and dreams.

The fact that it is normatively grounded is critical theory’sfourth defining feature. Not only does the theory criticize currentsociety, it also envisages a fairer, less alienated, more democraticworld. In Benhabib’s (1986) terms, the project of critical theory issituated somewhere between social science and practical philoso-phy. Empirical investigation and utopian speculation are intimatelyconnected. The critique undertaken of existing social, political, andeconomic conditions springs from and depends on the form of thealternative society envisioned. Unlike traditional theories that areempirically grounded in an attempt to generate increasingly accu-rate descriptions of the world as it exists, critical theory tries to gen-erate a specific vision of the world as it might be. It springs from adistinct philosophical vision of what it means to live as a developedperson, as a mature adult struggling to realize one’s humanitythrough the creation of a society that is just, fair, and compassion-ate. This vision holds individual identity to be socially and cultur-ally formed. Adult development is viewed as a collective processsince one person’s humanity cannot be realized at the expense ofothers’ interests. Given critical theory’s insistence that opportunitiesfor development do not remain the preserve of the privileged few,the theory inevitably links adult development to the extension ofeconomic democracy.

This grounding of critical theory in a preconfigured vision andset of values opens it to the criticism that it is not a genuine theoryat all but a set of preferences, prescriptions, and platitudes—“Marxist flower power” as a onetime colleague of mine character-


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ized it. Horkheimer (1995) himself acknowledges this criticismcommenting that “although critical theory at no point proceedsarbitrarily and in chance fashion, it appears, to prevailing modesof thought, to be speculative, one-sided and useless . . . biased andunjust” (p. 218). He notes that this leads critics of the theory toportray it as “an aimless intellectual game, half conceptual poetry,half impotent expression of states of mind” (p. 209). After all, bas-ing a theory on the “single existential judgment” of critiquing andtransforming the commodity exchange economy does predeter-mine the focus of study. Yet it is not that simple.

In fact, trying to realize the philosophical and social vision ofcritical theory is enormously complicated. The industrial prole-tariat that figures so centrally in Marx’s analysis has expanded intothird-world peasantry (some of whom work in the first world) ascapital has become increasingly mobile. As Collini (2000) notes incommenting on the internationalizing of class conflict, “The ‘pro-letariat’ of global capitalism mostly have different colored skinsfrom those of the global bourgeoisie” (p. 12). The seductivepromise of a life full of more and better consumer goods has man-aged to blunt revolutionary impulses among those working-classadults who might be regarded as the engine of social change.Indeed, in Western capitalist societies the last years of the twenti-eth century saw a decline in political institutions, such as trade andlabor unions, organized to serve working-class interests.

The analytical terrain on which critical theory is fought out hasalso grown more complicated. Race and gender have attained anequal prominence with social class as units of analysis. Poststruc-turalism has challenged our simple understanding of the exerciseof sovereign or state power so that we are more aware of how weexercise censorship, surveillance, and discipline on ourselves. Andpostmodernism’s emphasis on the idiosyncratic and uncontrollablenature of experience seems to undercut the possibility of criticalawareness, freedom, and emancipation so central to critical the-ory’s project. As society has fragmented by race, culture, and gen-der, so too the possible configurations of what freedom looks likehave expanded. In and out of cyberspace, the ways human agencyand social preferences are exercised are, at least potentially, infi-nitely diverse. This contemporary emphasis on difference and


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diversity is one reason to reexamine pragmatism as a tradition thatembraces experimentation and emphasizes the different ways peo-ple think about realizing their humanity.

Of course, once we start using terms such as realizing humanity wehave to acknowledge that these are culturally loaded, their meaningsreflecting the class, gender, race, and ideology of those using them.The images generated by these terms vary greatly depending on thecultural milieu of the definer, with some images having much greaterstatus than others. To some the classical concert hall has much morecache as an appropriate place to realize one’s humanity through artis-tic creativity than, say, the mosh pit. To others, free market capitalismis seen as a more mature way to encourage freedom and creativeenergy than, say, state socialism. Additionally, postmodern analysiscalls into question the idea that people contain a coherent identitywaiting to be developed, arguing instead that this view represents amisplaced modernist confidence in the basic rationality and ultimateperfectibility of human beings. In postmodernism each of us is “frag-mented among a plurality of partial identities, identity being only pro-visionally determined and underdetermined, and therefore open tothe contingent addition of further partial identities” (Bagnall, 1999,p. 107). Faith in people’s capacity to become more humane, and soci-ety’s ability to organize itself along more compassionate lines, is shat-tered by the continuing existence of horrors such as genocide andethnic cleansing. In Bagnall’s words, postmodernism suggests that“morally, individuals appear to be capable of anything at all, so longas it is sanctioned by the frameworks of belief within which they areoperating” (p. 108). To the extent that critical theory posits the cre-ation of a more just and compassionate society as a pursuable ideal, itis unashamedly modernist.

This brings us to the fifth and final intriguing and distinctiveelement of critical theory, the fact that verification of the theory isimpossible until the social vision it inspires is realized. In otherwords, we won’t know whether critical theory is true or false untilthe world it envisages is created and we can judge its relativehumanity and compassion. Horkheimer (1995) puts it this way: “Inregard to the essential kind of change at which the critical theoryaims, there can be no corresponding concrete perception of ituntil it actually comes about. If the proof of the pudding is in theeating, the eating here is still in the future” (p. 220). Traditional


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theories can usually be assessed by reference to the world as it isnow or in the near future. Alternatively, the physical world can bemanipulated where possible to create conditions under which thepredictions of the theory can be tested for accuracy. By way of con-trast, Horkheimer warns that the struggle to create the conditionsunder which the vision of critical theory can be tested is a long,sometimes violent, often revolutionary struggle.

Outlining Critical Theory’s Relevance for Adult LearningSo how does all this connect to adult learning? And how, in par-ticular, can adult learning theory be reframed in the light of criti-cal theory? For me, two elements are central. First, and mostimportantly, we can focus on the dimensions of learning central tothe chief concern of critical theory. This concern might beexpressed as the desire to understand how the reproduction of bla-tantly unequal structures based on massive economic disparity isaccepted as the natural order of things by adults within successivegenerations. What does critical theory tell us about how adultslearn to accept and then challenge this state of affairs? Second, wecan explore the way critical theory applies the critical reflection onassumptions—often claimed to be a distinctive characteristic bothof adult learning and of adult education practice—on itself. Letme take each of these elements in turn.

The Centrality of LearningCritical theory is usually not written in terms immediately recog-nizable to those of us primarily interested in adult learning. Yet, ananalysis of adult learning is usually implicit in critical theory’s propo-sitions. Welton (1991, 1993, 1995) is perhaps the most forceful ex-positor of how critical theory, specifically that associated with JürgenHabermas, threads a theory of adult learning through its analysis.Subsumed within the general desire of critical theory to understandand then challenge the continuous reproduction of social, politi-cal, and economic domination are a number of related concerns.One of these is to investigate how dominant ideologies educate peo-ple to believe certain ways of organizing society are in their own bestinterests when the opposite is true. Another is to illuminate how the


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spirit of capitalism, and of technical and bureaucratic rationality,enters into and distorts everyday relationships (what Habermas callsthe colonization of the lifeworld by the system). A third (and this isparticularly important to a theory of adult learning) is to under-stand how people learn to identify and then oppose the ideologi-cal forces and social processes that oppress them.

A theory of adult learning originating in these general con-cerns of critical theory would attempt to answer a series of morespecific questions focused on the way people learn to awaken andthen act on their human agency. These questions would ask howpeople learn to challenge beliefs and structures that serve theinterests of the few against the well-being of the many. Some ofthese specific questions might be:

How do adults learn forms of reasoning that challenge dominantideology and that question the social, cultural, and politicalforms that ideology justifies?

How do adults learn to interpret their experiences in ways thatemphasize their connectedness to others and lead them to seethe need for solidarity and collective organization?

How do adults learn to unmask the flow of power in their lives andcommunities?

How do adults learn of the existence of hegemony—the processwhereby people learn to embrace ideas, practices, and institu-tions that actually work against their own best interests—andof their own complicity in its continued existence? And, onceaware of it, how do they contest its all-pervasive effects?

How do adults learn to defend the lifeworld (the set of under-standings and assumptions that frame how people live witheach other) and civil society (the relationships, associations,and institutions not directly under state control within whichpeople form relationships and develop identities) against theintrusion of capitalist ethics, market forces, and bureaucraticrationality?

How do adults learn to think critically by recognizing when an em-brace of alternative views is actually supporting the status quo itappears to be challenging?


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How do adults learn to recognize, accept, and exercise whateverfreedom they have to change the world?

How do adults learn the practice of democracy with all its contra-dictions and disciplines?

As should be clear from these questions, a critical theory of adultlearning is inevitably also a theory of social and political learning.It studies the systems and forces that shape adults’ lives and opposeadults’ attempts to challenge ideology, recognize hegemony, un-mask power, defend the lifeworld, and develop agency. Such a the-ory must recognize its explicitly political character. It must focusconsistently on political matters such as the way formal learning isstructured and limited by the unequal exercise of power. It mustnot shy away from connecting adult learning efforts to the creationof political forms, particularly the extension of economic democ-racy across barriers of race, class, and gender. It must understandadult education as a political process in which certain interests andagendas are always pursued at the expense of others, in which cur-riculum inevitably promotes some content as “better” than someother, and in which evaluation is an exercise of the power by someto judge the efforts of others. Critical theory springs from thedesire to extend democratic socialist values and processes, to cre-ate a world in which a commitment to the common good is thefoundation of individual well-being and development. A criticaltheory of adult learning will always come back to the ways in whichadults learn to do this.

A Critical Posture Toward Critical TheoryThe second element a critical theory of adult learning should dis-play is a self-critical stance toward its own propositions. Just as crit-ical theory illuminates the way that positivism and Enlightenmentrationality are cultural artifacts rather than universal truths—formsof understanding created in a particular time and place—so wemust understand critical theory itself as the product of a particu-lar social, political, and intellectual milieu. For critical theory to becritical, it must be on guard against its own ossification and en-tombment as a “grand theory” meant to explain all social interac-tion, for all people and for all time. A critical stance toward critical


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theory entails a productive skepticism regarding its universality andaccuracy. This means that those engaged in theory building mustapply the same standards of critical analysis to their own theory asthey do to theory developed by those energetically pursuing capi-talism and subscribing to bureaucratic rationality. Predictably,those within critical theory who ask uncomfortable questions andpoint out the theory’s negative consequences risk being ostracizedas intellectually unsound pariahs. Critical theory has its share ofStalinists who will not tolerate deviation from the party line.

Howard Zinn, a prominent American historian, points out thatthose who challenge the social order are just as capable of creat-ing their own orthodoxies as are dominant groups. He writes, “Theexperience of our century tells us that the old orthodoxies, the tra-ditional ideologies, the neatly tied bundles of ideas—capitalism,socialism, democracy—need to be untied, so that we can play andexperiment with all the ingredients, add others, and create newcombinations in looser bundles” (1990, p. 8). Zinn urges us tomake declarations of independence from rigid dogmas, and it isprecisely this self-critical posture toward its own propositions that acritical theory of adult learning must display.

This self-critical stance is not unfamiliar within critical theory;after all, the theory itself began as an attempt to reformulate Marx-ist thought in conditions Marx had not foreseen. As Bronner andKellner (1989) observe, “Inspired by the dialectical tradition ofHegel and Marx, critical theory is intrinsically open to develop-ment and revision” (p. 2). Even as strong a Marxist as AntonioGramsci observed that Marxism “tends to become an ideology inthe worst sense of the word, that is to say a dogmatic system of eter-nal and absolute truths” (1971, p. 407). In a 1918 article in Il Gridodel Popolo (The People’s Cry), Gramsci warned that Marx “is not aMessiah who left a string of parables laden with categorical imper-atives, with absolute unquestionable norms beyond the categoriesof time and space” (1988, p. 36). He believed that the value ofMarxist ideas was always a provisional value. In Gramsci’s stancetoward Marx, we can see how critical theory stands consistently fora rejection of unchanging dogma and is watchful for its own deifi-cation.

It is easy to forget this and to allow critical theory to becomesubject to the very reification it condemns. For example, Oberg and


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Underwood (1992) noted that when they enthusiastically intro-duced critical theory to preservice teachers as a new way for themto understand their experiences, this perspective served to “func-tion in the same debilitating way as the other frames already dis-carded, separating students from the daily events of their ownpractice and directing their attention to someone else’s construc-tion of their reality” (p. 166). Those of us convinced of the accu-racy of critical theory’s perspective can easily force this on learnersand colleagues in a self-defeating way. Our insistence that we havefound the one truly accurate way of understanding the world cansmack of condescending triumphalism, particularly if we dismissall criticism of our perspective as ideologically motivated propa-ganda. There should be no contradiction in critiquing critical the-ory. It is quite possible to accept, provisionally, the basic accuracyand utility of explanatory frameworks drawn from the critical the-ory tradition, while at the same time doing our best to challengethese. This is the purpose of books such as Mills’ The Marxists(1962), Eagleton’s Ideology (1991), Fay’s Critical Social Science (1987),and Kellner’s Critical Theory, Marxism, and Modernity (1989), all ofwhich exemplify Marcuse’s (1989) contention that “critical theoryis, last but not least, critical of itself and of the social forces thatmake up its own basis” (p. 72).

The strenuous effort to disprove the validity of one’s own ideason the assumption that what’s left after this effort is over musthave intrinsic merit is essentially an application of Popper’s (1959)principle of falsifiability, which to me is one of the elements of tra-ditional theories that Horkheimer (1995, p. 242) acknowledges ispart of a critical attitude. Theorizing critically requires that we beself-critical, that we turn a self-referential and skeptical eye on ourown tentative conclusions. As Kellner (1989) declares, “If criticaltheory is going to remain on the cutting edge of social theory,then it must be subject to the sort of critique which it applies totraditional theories and must move beyond previous inadequateor obsolete positions” (p. 2). Hegemony, ideology, alienation, thelifeworld, commodification—these concepts may help us under-stand our experiences, but if something comes along that makesmore sense and explains things more clearly, then we should beready to seize it.


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This second element of critical theory draws partly from thetradition of analytic philosophy but particularly from the prag-matic tradition with its emphasis on contingency and fallibility.Pragmatism holds that all theory, indeed all practice, is provisionaland open to reformulation. Its inclination is to experimentation,to undercutting its own foundations. Partly it anticipates post-modernism in encouraging an ironic skepticism regarding claimsto universal explanations and in delighting in playing with unpre-dictable possibilities. But a pragmatic inclination can be deployedin the service of social justice in the manner articulated by Cor-nel West. For West, “One sign of commitment . . . is always thedegree to which one is willing to be self-critical and self-question-ing, because that’s a sign that you’re serious about generating theconditions for the possibility of overcoming the suffering thatyou’re after” (West, 1999b, p. 295).

One of the temptations facing those who draw on critical the-ory is the development of an overconfidence regarding the accu-racy of their analysis (of course, the same is true of proponents oftraditional theory and positivism). A sense of triumphalism cancreep into an analysis that purports to penetrate the ideologicalveil drawn over everyday life to reveal the hegemonic reality lurk-ing beneath. This can then translate into an attitude of conde-scension toward those whose consciousness has yet to be raisedand who have yet to see how they are colluding in their ownoppression. There are also “no-go” areas that tend to be immunefrom critical scrutiny. For example, capitalism is often viewed asuncontestedly, irredeemably, and completely evil. A book such asJames Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me (1995) that admits thatcapitalism, whilst creating and maintaining enormous socialinequity and justifying genocide in the pursuit of expanded mar-kets, might also have produced some benefits is the exceptionrather than the rule.

An interesting example of a sympathetically critical stancetoward critical theory is Fay’s Critical Social Science (1987). In hisanalysis Fay summarizes the criticisms most commonly made ofcritical theory: “That it is inherently unresponsive to empirical evi-dence; that it starts with the a priori assumption that it has ‘theanswer’ to which it necessarily holds no matter what occurs; that itis inherently subjectivistic because it irreducibly contains a moral


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element; and that the goal of transforming society is incompatiblewith the objectivity required to study it with scientific rigor” (p. 5).His response to these criticisms is not to dismiss them as attacksmade by politically compromised enemies seeking to defuse criticaltheory of its revolutionary power. Instead, after laying out his ownarguments for the relevance and accuracy of critical theory, heattempts to critique the overly rationalistic and utopian dimensionsto the ideas he has just espoused. In doing this, Fay models thekind of critical approach to criticality I am arguing should be inte-gral to critical theorizing.

Put briefly, Fay argues that critical theory downplays the con-straining influence of tradition, culture, and history, tending toview these as inherently conservative forces. Yet, as he points out,a tradition such as a populist skepticism of wealthy political lead-ers is inherently emancipatory. He also acknowledges that there isa great deal of critical theorizing that is not directly associated withthe Frankfurt School, even if it is framed by similar concerns. Forhim it is important to broaden critical analysis beyond Germany.He quotes as examples of this contention figures as diverse as thepsychoanalyst R. D. Laing and the ex-director of the HighlanderResearch Center (well known to adult educators) John Gaventa.In the book you are now reading, the insights of figures such asFoucault, Gramsci, Williams, West, hooks, and Althusser for adultlearning are reviewed, yet none of these worked at the FrankfurtSchool, though to different degrees their work either responds toor builds upon Marx’s ideas.

Finally, Fay breaks with those who dismiss calls for empiricalverification as a misplaced application of positivist technical-ratio-nality to a critical epistemology. He aligns himself with Marcuse’s(1964) view that where its judgments of the possibility of liberationare concerned, critical theory “has to demonstrate the objectivevalidity of these judgments and the demonstration has to proceedon empirical grounds” (p. xi). Fay argues that predictive possibil-ities are inherent in critical theory’s formulations and that theaccuracy of these can be assessed by public reference to empiricalevidence. In other words, we should not be afraid of studying howwell social and educational experiments influenced by critical the-ory operate in the real world.


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It is important to reemphasize that infusing critical theory withthe spirit of self-critical inquiry was a hallmark of Frankfurt Schoolwriters. Jay (1973) makes the point that critical theory developeddialogically, through a critical engagement with other philosophi-cal systems, and that this gave it “its essentially open-ended, prob-ing, unfinished quality” (p. 41). In his survey of the FrankfurtSchool, Held (1980) writes regarding Horkheimer and Adornothat “it is ironic that they were attacked in the 1960s for their polit-ical pessimism and lack of practical involvement, but, after theirdeaths, for their supposed encouragement of ‘terrorism’ and ‘polit-ical irresponsibility’” (p. 39). Indeed, to many sympathetic to theFrankfurt School’s line of analysis one of the most frustrating devel-opments was Horkheimer’s, Adorno’s, and (to a lesser degree)Marcuse’s pessimism regarding the possibility of revolutionarychange and human liberation. These three thinkers refused tohold out the promise of false emancipatory hope when everythingthey observed empirically convinced them of the enduring imper-meability of the forces of social control. The same independenceof thought, unwillingness to toe any predetermined ideologicalline, and readiness to reverse previous positions in the face of newevidence or theorizing are characteristic of many of the theoristssurveyed in this book such as Foucault, Habermas, and West.

Because of its exercise of internal criticism, critical theory hasundergone a number of important reformulations over the years.First, class is no longer the only or sometimes even the primaryunit of analysis amongst those who identify themselves as criticaltheorists. Though it remains crucial, it is usually linked with raceand gender in the holy trinity of contemporary ideology critique.Second, Foucault’s (1980) analysis of power has alerted us to theway that sovereign power (power clearly exercised by some cen-tral authority such as the politburo, the military junta, the king,the cabinet, the party’s central committee, and so on) has beenpartially displaced by the exercise of disciplinary power (self-discipline exercised by subjects themselves who conduct their ownself-censorship and self-surveillance at their own sites of life andpractice). Third, postmodern critique has called into question themodernist underpinnings of critical theory, particularly thoseaspects that emphasize the unproblematic possibility of individual


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and collective liberation, emancipation, and transformation.Fourth, the legacy of critical pragmatism has encouraged a skep-ticism regarding any attempt to plunder methods and approachesthat are apparently successful in one political context (such asFreire’s approach to conscientization and problem-posing educa-tion developed in rural northeast Brazil) and then to parachutethem into quite different settings (such as American colleges anduniversities).

In this chapter I have argued that the starting point for explor-ing critical theory’s relevance for adult learning is to elaborate thedimensions of learning embedded in the chief concerns of criticaltheory. I have acknowledged that these concerns are normativelygrounded in a social-philosophical vision of a democratic society thattries to realize values of freedom, fairness, justice, and compassion(the fact that these values may sometimes be in contradiction will bediscussed later). The next stage in exploring this theory is to illumi-nate in more detail what the learning tasks of a critical theory mightbe and how they intersect.


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Chapter Two

The Learning Tasksof Critical Theory

In this chapter I want to provide an overview of the adult learningtasks that are embedded in critical theory. I argued in Chapter Onethat critical theory is normatively grounded in a vision of a societyin which people live collectively in ways that encourage the free ex-ercise of their creativity without foreclosing that of others. In sucha society people see their individual well-being as integrally boundup with that of the collective. They act toward each other with gen-erosity and compassion and are ever alert to the presence of in-justice, inequity, and oppression. Creating such a society can beunderstood as entailing a series of learning tasks: learning to rec-ognize and challenge ideology that attempts to portray the exploita-tion of the many by the few as a natural state of affairs, learning touncover and counter hegemony, learning to unmask power, learn-ing to overcome alienation and thereby accept freedom, learningto pursue liberation, learning to reclaim reason, and learning topractice democracy.

These learning tasks are, of course, interrelated and any sepa-ration of them is mostly for analytical purposes. After all, the cate-gories we use to make sense of our experiences are shaped bydominant ideology. We cannot pursue liberation without uncover-ing and then challenging the hegemony of capitalist values andpractices. And, of course, a central component of hegemony is thedissemination of an ideology that serves the interests of the fewwhile purporting to represent the many. But separating these tasksand concepts in order that we may understand their interrelation-ships better is defensible.

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Challenging IdeologyThe first, and arguably the preeminent, learning task embedded incritical theory is that of challenging ideology. In his analysis of crit-ical theory, Geuss (1981) writes that “the very heart of the criticaltheory of society is its criticism of ideology. Their ideology is whatprevents the agents in the society from correctly perceiving theirtrue situation and real interests; if they are to free themselves fromsocial repression, the agents must rid themselves of ideological illu-sion” (pp. 2–3). Clearly, then, a critical theory approach to adultlearning must begin by exploring how adults learn to resist ideo-logical manipulation. Yet the concept of ideology is complex andcontested, in McLellan’s (1986) judgment “the most elusive con-cept in the whole of social science” (p. 1). However, though theterm is used in multiple ways, it has a distinctive meaning within thecritical tradition. This tradition builds on Marx’s view that the rela-tions of production and material conditions of society determinepeople’s consciousness. As Eagleton writes, from a critical theoryviewpoint, ideology “signifies ideas and beliefs which help to legit-imate the interests of a ruling group or class specifically by distor-tion and dissimulation” (Eagleton, 1991, p. 30).

Critical theory sees ideology as inherently duplicitous, as a sys-tem of false beliefs that justify practices and structures that keeppeople unknowingly in servitude. Eagleton takes issue with this viewarguing that ideologies are not, by definition, false and that a con-dition of their gaining continued acceptance is that they containelements that are broadly seen as true (a point also made by Gram-sci). He also unmasks the condescension underlying the “ideologyas false consciousness” position: “To believe that immense numbersof people would live and sometimes die in the name of ideas whichwere absolutely vacuous and absurd is to take up an unpleasantlydemeaning attitude towards ordinary men and women” (p. 12).

Yet the fact remains that within the critical theory tradition thepredominant understanding of ideology has very distinct conno-tations of oppression and domination, of its being used to subju-gate and hoodwink people into accepting as normal and justifiablean artificially created and permanent state of inequity. To quoteEagleton (1991) again, “The study of ideology is among other


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things an inquiry into the ways in which people may come to investin their own unhappiness” (p. xiii). Critical theory views ideologyas the broadly accepted set of values, beliefs, myths, explanations,and justifications that appears self-evidently true, empirically accu-rate, personally relevant, and morally desirable to a majority of thepopulace. The function of this ideology is to maintain an unjustsocial and political order. Ideology does this by convincing peoplethat existing social arrangements are naturally ordained and obvi-ously work for the good of all. As Marx and Engels (1970) write,the ruling class aims “to represent its interest as the common inter-est of all the members of society . . . it has to give its ideas the formof universality and represent them as the only rational, universallyvalid ones” (p. 66).

Ideologies are hard to detect since they are embedded in lan-guage, social habits, and cultural forms that combine to shape theway we think about the world. They appear as common sense, asgivens, rather than as beliefs that are deliberately skewed to sup-port the interests of a powerful minority. On closer examination,however, we see that a degree of deliberation undergirds whatappear as accidentally emergent belief systems. As Fromm (1968)puts it, “Ideologies are ready-made thought-commodities spreadby the press, the orators, the ideologists in order to manipulate themass of people for purposes which have nothing to do with the ide-ology, and are very often exactly the opposite” (p. 153).

Understanding this process—how ideology works to supportthe power of a minority while appearing to advance the interestsof all—is one of the central ideas in Marx and Engels’ The GermanIdeology (1970). They write, “The ideas of the ruling class are inevery epoch the ruling ideas: i.e. the class which is the ruling mate-rial force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. . . the class which has the means of material production at its dis-posal, has control at the same time over the means of mental pro-duction” (p. 64). The individuals comprising this ruling classexercise dominion not just over the production and distributionof material goods. They “rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas,and regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of theirage” (p. 64). In recent years poststructuralists such as Foucaulthave clarified how knowledge and power entwine to create regimes

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of truth—dominant ideas, frameworks of analysis, and forms of dis-course that shape how we think about the world.

In critical theory, understanding and challenging the workingsof ideology has been a dominant concern, one often expressed as“ideology critique.” Ideology critique is an activity springing fromthe Enlightenment conviction that living fully as an adult means act-ing on the basis of instincts, impulses, and desires that are truly ourown, rather than implanted in us. Since capitalism will do its utmostto convince us that we should live in ways that support its workings,ideology critique holds that we cannot be fully adult unless weattempt to unearth and challenge the ideology that justifies this sys-tem. In doing this we come to see that the inclinations, biases,hunches, and apparently intuitive ways of experiencing reality thatwe regard as unique to us are actually socially learned. What we con-sider to be our idiosyncratic perspectives and dispositions are nowrealized to be, in Marcuse’s (1964) terms, “ideologically sedi-mented.”

Ideology critique helps us understand how we learn politicalideals, morality, and social philosophy within the institutions of civilsociety such as schools, associations, clubs, family, and friendshipnetworks. It also shows us that the constructs and categories we useto understand our daily experiences are ideologically framed. WhatWilliams (1977) calls our “structures of feeling” are seen in ideol-ogy critique as socially induced, learned from the cultural groupand social class to which we belong. So doing ideology critiqueinvolves adults in becoming aware of how ideology lives within themas well as understanding how it buttresses the structures of the out-side world that work against them. What strikes us as the normalorder of things is suddenly revealed through ideology critique as aconstructed reality that protects the interests of the powerful.

In the critical theory tradition, then, ideology critique is thebasic tool for helping adults learn to penetrate the givens of every-day reality to reveal the inequity and oppression that lurk beneath.Given that ideology critique is the central project of the FrankfurtSchool, a critical theory approach to adult learning should have atits core an understanding of how adults learn to recognize the pre-dominance of ideology in their everyday thoughts and actions andin the institutions of civil society. It should also illuminate howadults learn to challenge ideology that serves the interests of the


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few against the well-being of the many.

Contesting HegemonyIn a doctoral class titled Theoretical Foundations of Critical Peda-gogy that I taught with my colleague Seehwa Cho at the Universityof St. Thomas, an intriguing question was posed to the students bySeehwa. “How many of you think that a working class revolution ispossible in the USA?” she asked the group, all of whom were edu-cational or community activists. Not a single person, myself included,raised a hand to answer in the affirmative. “Right there, that’s hege-mony,” Seehwa declared, pointing out that when the possibility oflarge-scale social upheaval is foreclosed even by those with activistinclinations, there is little need for the state to make complicatedarrangements to retain power and enforce control.

Hegemony is an idea that understands the maintenance ofpolitical control as involving adult education and learning. It de-scribes the way that people learn to accept as natural and in theirown best interest an unjust social order. As Antonio Gramsci (whois the thinker most associated with the idea) points out, “Every rela-tionship of hegemony is necessarily an educational relationship”(1995, p. 157). People learn to embrace as commonsense wisdomcertain beliefs and political conditions that work against their in-terests and serve those of the powerful. If hegemony works as itshould, then there is no need for the state to employ coerciveforms of control—heavy policing, curfews, torture, assassinationsquads—to maintain social order. Instead of people opposing andfighting unjust structures and dominant beliefs, they learn toregard them as preordained, part of the cultural air they breathe.

In a society in which people learn attitudes and values fromentertainment media, and in which media outlets choose whatcounts as news and which social crises merit debate, the massmedia are obviously central to the smooth functioning of hege-mony. Herman and Chomsky (1988) describe the role the massmedia play in this regard as being that of manufacturing consent.This phrase—manufacturing consent—could serve as a good short-hand descriptor of the concept of hegemony. By manufacturingconsent Herman and Chomsky mean that media present as nor-mal a version of reality in which large-scale structural inequities are


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never mentioned, let alone challenged, and which people largelyaccept as an empirically accurate, neutral reality. Political issues,questions, and debate are reduced to personal issues and conflicts(witness the amount of airtime devoted to the Clarence Thomasconfirmation hearings, the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, or the personaldemonizing of Saddam Hussein). They contend that five filtersoperate to ensure that the media never challenge the hegemonyof capitalist ideas and practices: (1)the media are themselves hugecapitalist corporations, (2) the media’s survival depends on attract-ing advertising from other companies, (3) the media’s reliance ongovernment and business experts, (4) the media’s awareness of thelikelihood of complaints from powerful interests if these interests’activities are portrayed unfavorably, and (5) the propagation ofanticommunism as a national ideology.

The subtle tenacity and adaptability of hegemony lies in thefact that it is very difficult to peel away layers of oppression touncover a small cabal clearly conspiring to keep the majority silentand disenfranchised. If there is any conspiracy at work here, it isthe conspiracy of the normal. The ideas and practices of hege-mony—the stock opinions, conventional wisdoms, and common-sense ways of behaving in particular situations that we take forgranted—are part and parcel of everyday life. It is not as if theseare being forced on us against our will. The dark irony, the crueltyof hegemony, is that adults take pride in learning and acting onthe beliefs and assumptions that work to enslave them. In learningdiligently to live by these assumptions, people become their ownjailers. By incorporating the concept of hegemony into the analysisof ideology, Gramsci widens our understanding of how ideologycontributes to the maintenance of social control. The emphasisshifts from understanding how the state or sovereign imposes aview of the world on a neutral, skeptical, or resentful populace tounderstanding how people are willing partners with the rulinggroup by actively colluding in their own oppression. Indeed, help-ing adults learn to embrace oppression is the central educationaltask of hegemony.

The concept of hegemony becomes ever more relevant in thetwenty-first century as multinational corporations take the place ofgovernments as determinants of history and economics. Multi-nationals are cloaked in secrecy, accountable only to a closed com-


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munity of stockholders, and operate with little public scrutiny. Theyare extremely malleable in their capacity to move across nationalboundaries in their search for new markets and cheaper labor andin their ability to respond to new social conditions, political shifts,technological developments, and demographic changes. Their sur-vival rests on people learning to believe that the products and ser-vices multinationals offer fulfill genuine needs and are endemic toa happy, fully adult life. The parallels with hegemony’s emphasis onpeople learning to embrace ideas that seem natural and desirable,but that actually serve the interests of others, are clear.

The concept of hegemony also extends our understanding ofpower, in some ways anticipating Foucault’s (1980) much laterwork in this area. Foucault argued that in contemporary societypower works in much more subtle ways than previously acknowl-edged, and that it should be understood as a circulation or flowaround society rather than as something statically imposed fromabove. In his view we have moved from the exercise of sovereignpower (power clearly exercised by a recognizable central control-ling force) to the exercise of disciplinary power (power exercisedon ourselves by ourselves). Because we learn self-discipline, under-take self-surveillance, and exercise self-censorship, there is littleneed for dominant groups to force ideas or behaviors on us. Theparallel here is with hegemony’s emphasis on getting people tolearn and love their place. Gramsci and Foucault both see adultsas colluding in their own servitude thereby removing the state’sneed to enforce this.

Gramsci’s concept of hegemony is chilling stuff. Hegemony ispowerful yet adaptable, able to reconfigure itself, skillfully incor-porate resistance, and give just enough away to its opponents tokeep them quiescent while remaining more or less intact. YetGramsci also opened up the possibility of opposition, of replacinga minority ruling-class hegemony with a majority proletarian hege-mony. If hegemony is in constant flux and understood partly as aprocess of negotiation between oppressor and oppressed, thenchinks and contradictions (some of which reflect the internal con-tradictions of capitalism) inevitably appear. Williams (1977) under-scores this view arguing that hegemony “does not just passively existas a form of dominance. It has continually to be renewed, defendedand modified. It is also continually resisted, limited, altered,


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challenged by pressures not at all its own” (p. 112). This point alsopredates Foucault’s emphasis on the possibility of adults learningto resist disciplinary power at the local site at which it is exercised.Foucault (1980) hypothesizes that “there are no relations of powerwithout resistances; the latter are all the more real and effective be-cause they are formed right at the point where relations of powerare exercised” (p. 142). So although hegemony exists, it is never atotal blanket smothering all opposition.

Where and how does opposition to hegemony arise? Popularculture was one site of oppositional practice for Gramsci, the work-place (particularly the factory councils) another. The labor move-ment, the environmental movement, alternative political partiessuch as the Green Party, antiracist initiatives, the feminist classroom,community action projects supported by adult and popular educat-ion centers (such as the Lindeman Center in Chicago, the FreireCenter in Minneapolis, or the Highlander Center in Tennessee),attempts to teach the deconstruction of media images in schools andcolleges, all these are examples of educational counterhegemony,premised on the conviction that adults can learn to recognize whenthey are being manipulated. Even the World Wide Web can be usedcreatively as an adult educational tool to mobilize and coordinateglobal protests against imperialist invasions, capitalism, and trans-national trade negotiations, rather than as the advertising tool ofsoftware giants who can control access to it.

Given the centrality of hegemony to ideological analysis, a crit-ical theory approach to adult learning should help us understandhow adults learn to recognize hegemony in the beliefs and assump-tions they live by and the structures they live within. It should alsoexamine how adults learn to contest hegemony individually andcollectively by striving to replace it with a system of beliefs and prac-tices that represents the interests of the majority.

Unmasking PowerPower is omnipresent in human existence, evident as much in theminutiae of interpersonal relationships as in large-scale politicalarrangements. One can deny its existence, but critical theory holdsthat its influence can never be erased. Typical of this is Foucault’s(1980) insistence that “power is ‘already there,’ that one is never


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‘outside’ it, that there are no ‘margins’ for those who break with thesystem to gambol in” (p. 141). Part of becoming adult is learning torecognize the play of power in our lives and the ways it is used andabused. It is a mistake to think of power in wholly negative terms, asonly being exercised to keep people in line. A sense of possessingpower—of having the energy, intelligence, resources, and opportu-nity to act on the world—is a precondition of intentional socialchange. When the power of the individual comes to be seen as inex-orably embedded in the power of the collective (for example, in asocial class, a culture, a gender, a race, a social movement), then thepossibility of large-scale social change, even of revolution, comes dra-matically alive. This is what Mary Parker Follett (1924a, 1924b)described as “power with” rather than “power over” and also whatsome refer to as empowerment. Interestingly, in an ironic demon-stration of how hegemony incorporates and tames potentially dis-ruptive ideas, empowerment has now been claimed by figures on thepolitical right to justify their support of free market capitalism.

A critical theory understanding of adult learning should inves-tigate how people learn to recognize the flow of power in their livesand communities, how they come to appreciate that power isinscribed (to use one of Foucault’s favorite terms) in their every-day reasoning and actions, and how they try to redirect it to servethe interests of the many rather than the few. Unmasking power isparticularly difficult given that its configuration and exercise is jus-tified by and embedded in prevailing ways of thinking and speak-ing, what Foucault called “regimes of truth.” For example, thewidespread use of Darwinian metaphors (such as survival of thefittest) or mythic images of the self-made man (implying that anymale can become president) creates a justification of existingpower arrangements, whatever form these take. Furthermore, exist-ing power imbalances are then seen as reflecting the natural orderof things. After all, if the fittest really do survive then the ones whoare in positions of power must be there by virtue of their innatestrength or superior intelligence since this has obviously allowedthem to rise to the top. Holding political power thus comes to con-tain its own justification. Those exercising it seem to do so by evo-lutionary right. They are the ones who appear to be left standingafter the weeding out of those weaklings unfit to handle its stressesand requirements.


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A concern to explore how adults learn to unmask power hasan honorable tradition in adult education predating by manydecades the poststructuralist analyses of Foucault. Eduard Linde-man spent much of his life arguing for adult education as “theoperating alternative for dominance, dictatorship and violence”([1937] 1987b, p. 6) believing that “adult education is the answerto blind prejudice and demagoguery” ([1944] 1987c, p. 115). Heurged a network of neighborhood discussion groups as the mosteffective hedge a society could evolve against the danger of creep-ing totalitarianism. A major tradition in North American and Euro-pean adult education is to ally the field with social movementsconcerned to empower working-class adults through organizationssuch as trade unions, factory councils, worker cooperatives, andother collectivist groupings. The thread that ties together suchlionized initiatives as the Highlander Folk School, the Antigonishmovement, Ruskin College, and Freireian culture circles is the con-cern to unmask and then confront power structures that standagainst working-class interests. This is partly achieved by helpingso-called “ordinary” people appreciate and act on the power theyalready have. Adults learning the possibilities of their own powerthrough sharing knowledge, experiences, tactics, strategies, suc-cesses, and failures is one pole of radical and liberatory adult education. Learning to face down and subvert power structures,and to experiment with forms of collective organization and democratic process, is the other. So a theme that runs through var-ious strands of adult educational literature is the importance of learning to develop agency—the capacity to exert influence on the world through the exercise of individual and collectivepower.

One of the earliest attempts to theorize how people experiencebeing powerful and how this sense is differentially distributed wasMcClusky’s (1963, 1970) power/load/margin formula. McCluskyposited that at any time of life adults have a load that they carrymade up of social tasks they need to perform and internal aspira-tions and desires they want to realize. Power is defined as the re-sources, abilities, and allies adults can call upon to help them carrythis load. The greater the margin between the large amounts ofpower adults possess and the smallness of the load they have tocarry, the more options for growth they have open to them. This


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is a highly psychologized approach to understanding power, but itdoes have the merit of conceptualizing power as access to re-sources. Thinking of power as bound up with the number and di-versity of resources people can call on in the pursuit of their goalsinevitably leads one to ask how it is that these resources are differ-entially distributed and tapped. This takes one straight into politi-cal and economic analysis.

Another area of adult learning that has the understanding ofpower at its center is self-directed learning. The massive amount ofresearch conducted on self-directed learning in adults has at its corethe study of how adults exercise power and control over their owneducational activities. Although critics such as Collins (1991) argueforcefully that self-directed learning has degenerated into a reduc-tionistic concern with the techniques of learning contracts and thetechnology of online instruction, others (Brookfield, 1993; Ham-mond and Collins, 1991) believe that a concern to unmask and con-front power lies at the heart of this form of learning. Mezirow’s(1991a, 1991b, 1998) theory of transformative learning and themany follow-up studies this has inspired (Taylor, 1997) also has as acentral focus understanding how reframing a meaning scheme ormeaning perspective brings with it an increased sense of power. Herepower is regarded as the ability to understand and take action in theworld in a way that feels authentically grounded in critical reflection.

In sum, then, one contribution of critical theory to understand-ing adult learning is to explore how adults learn to recognize andunmask power relations and inequities embedded in ideology and inscribed in their everyday lives. It investigates how adults learnto decide when power is being exercised responsibly and how theylearn to defend themselves against its unjust and arbitrary use. Italso studies how adults learn to develop the sense of powerfulagency—of possessing the desire, resources, and capacity to cometogether with others in purposeful collective action. Finally, criti-cal theory examines critically its own articulation of power, takinginto account the poststructuralist contention that power is exer-cised in more diffuse and contradictory ways than critical theoryhas traditionally allowed for.


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Overcoming AlienationOne of the most enduring concepts in Marxism is that of alien-ation. We are alienated, in Marx’s view, when we work and live inways that estrange us from who we really are. When we are unableto realize our innate creativity in the workplace, and when the workwe do leaves us too tired to explore that creativity outside work,then we are in a state of alienation that stands against our freedom.Freedom is possible only in a nonalienated world, one in which wecan choose how to act in ways that have not been foreclosed for us.Hence alienation is antithetical to freedom, and the abolition ofthe former is essential to the realization of the latter. The study ofhow this might happen was the life’s work of Erich Fromm.

Unlike alienation, which is a word associated with a fairly rari-fied world of novelists, poets, philosophers, and theologians, free-dom is a word that most people invoke fairly regularly as theylament its absence or celebrate its presence in their lives. Freedomis the flip side of alienation. By implication the removal of alien-ation allows for the possibility of freedom, for the unmanipulatedexercise of one’s creative powers. As such, claiming freedom andovercoming alienation are inextricably intertwined.

Freedom is also a truly sacred word, one in the name of whichcountless people have lost their lives. For most of us in the West-ern first world, freedom is an uncontested good, something to goto war over and endure enormous pain and sacrifice to defend. Ofall the ideas in the grand narrative of the Enlightenment, it is per-haps the most powerful and the most cherished. Governmentsinvoke it to justify their policies, people see the search for it as theguiding principle of their lives, and its promise galvanizes socialmovements. Claiming freedom, then, could be said to be a centraltask of adulthood, something we spend a lifetime learning how todo as we try to escape our alienated lives. As such, it must occupya prominent place in any critical theory of adult learning.

Of course from a postmodernist perspective freedom is a naïveand problematic notion, precisely because of its Enlightenmentorigins. From an Enlightenment perspective freedom is seen asexercised by independent selves able to make choices and takedecisions that match their own personalities and preferences.McLaren (1995) regards this view of human conduct as “the mag-


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nificent enlightenment swindle of the autonomous, stable and self-contained ego that is supposed to be able to act independently ofits own history” (p. 204). This Enlightenment ideal of freedom isgrounded in the conception of the individual self as a person whoacts as an integrated whole to realize her or his innermost desiresin a unique and authentic way. Usher, Bryant, and Johnston (1997)describe this as “the classical scientific self—individualised, undif-ferentiated, an essentially abstract entity, the ‘monological’ self”(p. 94).

Postmodernism and critical theory both share a suspicion ofthis deracinated view of human conduct. Both question the ideathat people act as autonomous entities in realizing core desires ordiscovering core identities. Postmodernism contends that becauseour lives are embedded in social and cultural contexts that con-stantly shift and fragment, freedom has no universal face. Howfreedom is conceived and lived varies enormously with time andlocation. Indeed, for freedom to be valued by a group, its mem-bers must share a set of cultural influences that can be traced backto the Enlightenment.

Critical theory holds that individual conduct must always beunderstood as shaped by dominant ideology. From this perspec-tive even when we think we are exercising our freedom as individ-uals, we are living out ideological battles and contradictions. Thissets critical theory at odds with existentialism. To existentialists,freedom is something we are fated to claim through the exerciseof choice. Life continually forces choices on us, and we have nooption other than to act on these in ways that reveal our essentialselves. To deny that we have this freedom is to live in bad faith, topretend that our choices have nothing to do with who we are butare inevitably shaped by wider forces.

For the second half of the twentieth century, the creation and de-fense of freedom as central to a nonalienated life was the major con-cern of social critics as diverse as Hannah Arendt, George Orwell,and Erich Fromm, all of whom were united in their concern for thethreat totalitarianism posed to the realization of humanity. Fromm’sEscape from Freedom (1941), written at the height of fascism, exploredhow humans try to avoid the responsibility of freedom. Since free-dom involves us making choices, taking actions, and living by com-mitments for which we take responsibility, and since doing these


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things is discomforting and difficult, Fromm argued that peopleavoid them by embracing totalitarian dictatorships or becoming will-ing automatons in the industrial machine. Ideologies such as fascismor totalitarian communism that allow people to identify with a largeridentity and that purport to direct people’s actions to some largerpredefined purpose are, in Fromm’s view, immensely appealing tothose afraid to live with the burden of freedom.

Fromm, Arendt, and Orwell were primarily concerned with polit-ical totalitarianism, the tendency of governments and state institutionsto attempt to control all aspects of life and feeling. To political totali-tarianism, critical theory added the threat of economic totalitarian-ism, the tendency of capitalism to dominate all aspects of people’sexistence by making the acquisition of goods and services the raisond’être of life. Economic totalitarianism is seen in the growth of multi-national corporations and the globalization of desire. Through theskillful manipulation of images across national borders, multination-als work to create a globally shared consensus of what constitutesbeauty and the good life and what it means to be fully human (drink-ing coca-cola and eating Big Macs while strolling the Great Wall ofChina or drifting down the Amazon). To the contemporary Frenchthinker Baudrillard (1975, 1983), people’s interaction with theseimages, symbols, and representations of desire (what he terms “simu-lacra”) is the chief way they experience reality.

Fromm is one of the critical theorists most associated with ana-lyzing freedom, largely through his classic work Escape from Freedom(1941), published outside the United States under the title The Fearof Freedom. He argued that a major cause of contemporary alienationwas an unwillingness of people to take responsibility for their ownactions. People are alienated because they fear their freedom andseek ways to escape the necessity to make choices that inevitablylead to certain consequences. In non-Fascist societies the attemptto escape freedom is seen most prominently in the flight intoautomaton conformity, a flight that people hope will help them feelunalienated.

Automaton conformity is a particularly contemporary form ofalienation that represents people’s desire to think and act as partof an anonymous mass. Its logic is that the majority is always right,so to achieve happiness one must always discover what the majoritythinks and then follow that. In a state of automaton conformity,


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people strive diligently to mimic what they believe to be common-sense views and to behave in ways that ensure they blend in with themajority. As with Foucault’s notion of disciplinary power, people areexercising a perverted form of agency on themselves to ensure theystay in line. This kind of conformity signified the apotheosis ofalienation for Fromm, and much of his energy was devoted tounderstanding how it might be overcome.

A critical theory of adult learning will explore several questionsconcerning how alienation might be overcome to allow the exer-cise of true freedom. How do people learn to develop a sense offree agency where they feel they possess the desire, capacity, andresources to shape the world according to their desires? How doadults learn to recognize the varying degrees of freedom that canbe experienced in different contexts? How do they learn to detectwhen they’re living a life that is supposedly free, but that is in real-ity shaped by their alienating attempt to satisfy needs manufac-tured by corporate advertising? How do adults learn to fight thealienating forces and obstacles that prevent them from claimingfreedom? How do they live with the sense of failure and frustrationthis struggle sometimes induces? How do people learn to recon-cile their desire to act freely with cultural constraints or collectivedisapproval? How do adults learn to live with the responsibility andfear of freedom Fromm explored? How do they learn to questionsocially constructed images and metaphors of freedom (such asthe free press or the free market) that disguise the control exer-cised by powerful political economic and political forces? How dopeople learn to live with a perceived absence of freedom? And,finally, what kinds of adult educational approaches and conditionstend to foster a sense of freedom in participants?

These are modernist questions springing from the Enlighten-ment vision of people acting to realize their humanity in a societyexhibiting the fewest possible inequities and injustices. In address-ing them, however, I keep in mind postmodernism’s skepticismregarding the concept of total freedom and its awareness of theoppression and atrocities committed in its name. Postmodernismreminds us that freedom is never absolute, always contextual, andthat it should be the focus of continual critical analysis.


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Learning LiberationAs Chapter One made clear, critical theory has as a central purposethe liberation of creativity from the demands of capitalism. Formany the best chance for this liberation to occur is in mass socialmovements that will force large-scale social change. Individual lib-eration is seen as dependant on collective liberation. While agree-ing with the importance of collective social movements, the criticaltheorist Herbert Marcuse also believed that attention should bepaid to the possibility of individual liberation detached from thecollectivity. He emphasized factors such as isolation, distance, sep-aration, and privacy that other critical theorists are less drawn to.To him the inner revolution symbolized by the development ofnew sensibilities, aesthetic impulses, and imaginative powers issometimes an important precursor to the outer revolution thatcalls for new forms of social, economic, and political organization.

How do adults learn to liberate themselves from dominant ide-ology? This is the question Marcuse addresses in books such as OneDimensional Man (1964), An Essay on Liberation (1969), and The Aes-thetic Dimension (1978a). One-dimensional thought is a mental andsocial phenomenon very similar to the instrumentalization of rea-son described by Horkheimer in The Eclipse of Reason (1974). It isthought focused solely on making current systems work better,rather than thought that calls the legitimacy of these systems intoquestion. Marcuse did not believe we could escape one-dimen-sional thought by relying on our own reasoning capacities. For himthe creative force existed at a subliminal level, and its release couldbe triggered by aesthetic impulses. When adults experience deeplyand powerfully a work of art such as a play, poem, picture, song,sculpture, or novel, they undergo a temporary estrangement fromtheir everyday world. This estrangement is disturbing in a pro-ductive and revolutionary way. It opens adults to the realizationthat they could reorder their lives to live by a fundamentally dif-ferent, more instinctual ethic. Marcuse called adults’ developmentof a new sensibility “rebellious subjectivity.”

What methods work best to develop rebellious subjectivity?One of its crucial dynamics, according to Marcuse, is the separa-tion of adults from dominant values, commonsense opinions, andall the pressures that guide our thoughts and aesthetic responses


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into predetermined channels. This often requires adults to removethemselves temporarily from their peers. Isolation, detachment,and privacy are individual states that Marcuse stresses as potentiallyrevolutionary. This is in stark contrast to much of critical theorywhich is suspicious of individual separation as an indulgence, aform of reflective luxury. In adult education circles, this suspicionof individualism often translates into an advocacy (sometimesuncritical) of collaborative, cohort-style learning formats.

The assumption of many involved in cohort learning programsis that a cohort represents an inherently supportive learning com-munity that exhibits a concern for each member’s welfare. But oneof the dark sides of the cohort format is the often unacknowledgedpossibility of a form of groupthink developing. In cohort programsthat involve a degree of participation, even of student-governance,there is a danger of a few strong voices defining the agenda earlyon in the cohort’s history and of this agenda mimicking the dom-inant culture’s ideology. Alternatively, when students meet as agroup free from faculty interference to decide on which curricu-lar or policy demands, requests or preferences they wish to presentto faculty, there is the risk that dissenting, minority voices will beseen as obstructive, as getting in the way of a speedy resolution.Students’ desire to come to consensus and thereby present aunited front to faculty overrides the need to be alert to implicitpressures for ideological conformity.

Marcuse’s position is that ideological domination permeatesall interpersonal communications, including those of collaborativeadult education groups. The logic of one-dimensional thoughtholds that cooperative team work and other forms of group activ-ity often encouraged in cohort programs will automatically bedirected toward making systems work better, rather than chal-lenging the moral basis of those systems. Each person’s belief inthe basic efficacy regarding the way the adult education programand the larger society are organized is reinforced by contact withothers in the program or society. So temporarily removing our-selves from the influence of others is a revolutionary act, a stepinto, rather than a retreat from, the real world. From this per-spective accelerated learning programs that emphasize self-pacedlearning, individualized programs of study, or online instructionare raising the chances that learners might possibly experience the


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degree of separation from the mainstream body of learners nec-essary for the development of rebellious subjectivity.

Reclaiming ReasonTo be able to reason—that is, to assess evidence, make predictions,judge arguments, recognize causality, and decide on actions whereno clear choice is evident—is often presumed to be a mark ofadulthood. A crucial element in reasoning within the critical tradi-tion is the ability to do these things in ways that do not automaticallysupport the logic of capitalism. But according to critical theoristssuch as Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse, our capacity to reasonhas become what they describe as instrumentalized. In other words,we think reasoning is something we can only legitimately apply onlyto technical questions such as how to get to work on time, how toplease our supervisor, how to get good grades in school, or how toaccess the best data source in a Web search. Reasoning about philo-sophical questions such as what constitutes living a moral life, what itmeans to organize society fairly, or what qualities should be prizedabove all others in personal relations becomes seen as inappropri-ate or off-limits. A major concern of critical theory is to reclaim rea-son as something to be applied in all spheres of life, particularly indeciding values by which we should live, not just in areas wheretechnical decisions are called for.

One of the theorists most concerned with this reclamation ofreason is Jürgen Habermas. Habermas believes that the instru-mentalization of reason is linked to the disappearance of oppor-tunities in our lives for us to meet with others to discuss small andlarge matters of mutual concern. He talks of the loss of the publicsphere, the domain in which people used to come together andexplore how to organize and conduct their communal affairs. Nowthat village gatherings and town meetings are rendered increas-ingly irrelevant by the advent of mass society and cyberspace, nocontemporary equivalent of these places of association hasemerged. In Habermas’ view we are living increasingly privatizedlives as civil society (the informal groupings we participate regu-larly in from car pools to parent organizations, churches to volun-tary associations) declines. The overall result of these trends,according to Habermas, is the invasion of the lifeworld.


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Lifeworld is a word that has begun to seep into the discourse ofadult and higher education (Welton, 1995; Williamson, 1998; Ser-giovanni, 1999) though it has yet to lodge itself in mainstreamanalysis. It is a term associated with the phenomenologist AlfredSchutz, who used it to describe the preconscious, taken-for-grantedpresuppositions, understandings, and perceptual filters that deter-mine how we experience reality. As explained in Schutz’s book withLuckmann (Schutz and Luckmann, 1973), the lifeworld is “theunquestioned ground of everything given in my experience, andthe unquestionable frame in which all the problems I have to dealwith are located” (p. 4). It is not something of which we are aware;rather, in the lifeworld “we designate everything which we experi-ence as unquestionable; every state of affairs is for us unproblem-atic until further notice” (p. 4). A crucial aspect of the lifeworld isthat it is intersubjective; in other words, it represents a set of sharedmeanings which make it possible for people to communicate witheach other. The connections between lifeworld and ideology as asocially created structure of perception and feeling should be clear.The lifeworld is the unacknowledged frames of reference and setsof unquestioned assumptions that structure our actions and formsof reasoning.

Adult educators mostly know the term through various inter-pretations of the ideas of Habermas. Like Schutz, Habermasemphasizes the inaccessibility of the lifeworld, the way it forms ablurred and shadowy backdrop to all we think, speak, and do. Forhim “the lifeworld forms the indirect context of what is said, dis-cussed, addressed in a situation . . . [it] is the intuitively present,in this sense familiar and transparent, and at the same time vastand incalculable web of presuppositions that have to be satisfied ifan actual utterance is to be at all meaningful, that is valid, orinvalid” (Habermas, 1987a, p. 131). However, Habermas arguesthat Schutz and Luckmann do not pay enough attention to the wayin which the intersubjectivity of the lifeworld—our attempts atmutual comprehension and understanding—is determined by lin-guistic and communicative structures. To him the rules and pat-terns of speech we intuitively accept end up determining thelifeworld’s shape. He proposes an everyday concept of the life-world that comprises the self-evident forms of reasoning and conversation that we use to come to common understandings. The


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unacknowledged rules and conventions that convince us thatsomeone is saying something important comprise a symbolic struc-ture. This structure frames how we form our identities, how weacquire cultural knowledge, and how we develop group solidarity.

What has most intrigued adult education theorists is the wayHabermas argues that the lifeworld has become “uncoupled” fromand then “colonized” by the system. The system comprises the so-cial processes that regulate the exchange of power and money insociety. These regulatory processes derive from capitalist ideologyand from bureaucratic forms of administration. In contemporarysociety, system imperatives—rules and judgments that shape how weact—have invaded the lifeworld. These imperatives affect behavior,morality, and ethics and directly influence not only how we reasonbut how we live our lives as citizens, workers, and family members.An example of a capitalist system imperative might be correlating peo-ple’s wisdom with their wealth (making the rich smarter than the restof us). Or it might be equating success and happiness with the pur-chase of consumer goods. Examples of bureaucratic rationality systemimperatives might be believing that a well-lived life should be orderedaccording to principles of time management (so that we program ourdays for thirty minutes of spiritual reflection here, forty minutes ofdeep, relationship-building conversation there), writing up family con-tracts as a way for parents to control the behavior of their children, orturning to professionally certified experts when we face difficulties inour relationships.

When these imperatives become reified, they are perceived asgeneral beliefs and rules that have an existence independent of peo-ple’s lives. In Habermas’ terms they are uncoupled from our every-day experience and regarded as things apart. But being uncoupleddoes not mean they are without influence. Quite the contrary.Habermas proposes the thesis of internal colonization which states“that the subsystems of the economy and state become more andmore complex as a consequence of capitalist growth, and penetrateever deeper into the symbolic reproduction of the lifeworld” (1987,p. 367). Examples of this are the increased numbers of home officesfor many middle-class workers made possible by the World WideWeb and the shift from a workforce composed chiefly of full-timeemployees to one with a large sector of part-time, self-employed(often of necessity) workers.


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These changes have been accompanied by a reconfigurationof what constitutes a work site or work space. Is it the factory, thedesk in the corner of the bedroom, the government office, the cof-fee shop, or the kitchen table? Once work is brought into thedomestic setting, the lines between work and personal life becomeblurred. Forms of thinking and rules of social living derived fromthe capitalistic values and bureaucratic rationality evident in thedomain of work come to invade our family lives, friendships, workrelationships, and community involvements. These economic con-cerns become anchored in the lifeworld, shaping how people thinkabout realizing their potential or taking control over their lives.Commenting on this thesis, Newman (1999) observes that “we findourselves managing and judging everyday relationships, commu-nications, actions and events, however inappropriate it may actu-ally be, in terms of money and power. And we find more and moreof our lives subject to control by the economy and the exercise ofpower through the political and legal structures” (p. 154).

How does Habermas’ thought connect to a critical theory ofadult learning? In an earlier and highly influential formulation of histheory of transformative learning, Mezirow (1981) developed theoutlines of a critical theory of adult learning and education basedon Habermas’ theory of communicative action, especially his dis-tinction between technical, communicative, and emancipatorydomains of knowledge. Michael Welton (1995) and others builton, and sometimes disagreed with, Mezirow’s engagement withHabermas in a volume titled In Defense of the Lifeworld.

A critical theory of adult learning should begin by investigat-ing how the lifeworld permeates and shapes our identities and howwe learn to become aware of its presence in specific situations.Although Schutz and Habermas declare the logical impossibilityof ever apprehending the lifeworld’s exact presence, the very factthat they name the phenomenon undercuts somewhat the con-tention that it is, by definition, unknowable. To Welton and others(1995) a critical theory of adult learning would study how capital-ism places system imperatives in the lifeworld and how adults learnto recognize that this is happening and thereby resist its momen-tum. Such a theory would seek to explore specific questions suchas: How do adults learn to challenge consumer culture’s definitionof their needs and wants? How do they learn to recognize the


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cheapening of political discourse into sound bites and to contestthe reality that those with the most funds have their voices heardthe loudest? How do people learn to escape definitions of taste orbeauty that tie these things to conspicuous consumption? How dowe learn to reclaim domains of our lives that we have ceded toexperts and to those who control and possess specialized knowl-edge? And, finally, how do we learn to sneak by the forces of seg-mentation and individuation that have cut us off from realizingour common interests and learn to rekindle the spirit and actualityof organizing collectively for the common good?

Practicing DemocracyDespite its origins in Marxism, contemporary critical theory (par-ticularly that of Jürgen Habermas) is as interested in investigatingthe social ideal of democracy as that of socialism or communism.A theorist such as Marcuse, who was castigated during his life forbeing an antidemocrat and therefore anti-American, professedhimself devoted to the project of realizing democracy despite thelack of any models of genuinely democratic societies. As Stalinismand totalitarian communism called the socialist dream into ques-tion, the Frankfurt School theorists stressed democracy’s empha-sis on the liberty humans need to enjoy if they are to take freeactions that spring from their own desires and interests. Contem-porary critical educators such as Greene (1988) argue that thepolitical and economic conditions embedded in the democraticideal mean that it can serve as an accessible and understandablespringboard for radical practice in American education.

However, as with all grand narratives, the ideal of democracycan become reified and work to support capitalist hegemony. Peo-ple can come to see the democratic process as existing indepen-dent of their daily lives and disconnected from their concerns. Yetthey believe the democratic system is out there somewhere quietlyworking to ensure basic equity, defend free speech, and alloweveryone an equal chance to participate in the political process.The fact that dissenting voices are sometimes heard reassures peo-ple that the system is working to give fair and equal representationto all points of view. This is the point of Marcuse’s idea of repres-


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sive tolerance. By allowing a certain amount of social criticism inthe name of free speech, the dominant group convinces the restof the people that they live in a democracy. This reassuring con-viction then blunts people’s desire to pursue revolution andensures that basic economic and political structures remain intact.

Adult education, particularly in the United States, has firmlyembraced the democratic ideal. To describe an act of practice asdemocratic is to confer on it the adult educational “Good House-keeping” seal of approval. Of all the ideas espoused as representingan authentic adult educational tradition, the idea that its practi-tioners should work to make their practice increasingly democraticis one of the most powerful. The words democracy or democratic areoften used to justify and defend whatever practice adult educatorssubscribe to, serving as a kind of scriptural signaling. They are in-voked to signify the progressive, leftist credentials of the speaker.

As with other grand narratives, the idea of democracy is mal-leable and slippery, with as many particular definitions and inter-pretations as it has utterers. It can be invoked so frequently andritualistically that it becomes evacuated of any significant meaning.In this way democracy becomes a premature ultimate—a term thatcarries such reverence that, once invoked, any further serious dis-cussion of its meaning is precluded. If we answer a question aboutour practice by replying that we did something because it wasdemocratic, then the conversation often comes to a full stop. Theword is so uncritically revered in adult education that it hasbecome almost immune to critical scrutiny. Only by trying to liveout the democratic process do the contradictions of this ideabecome manifest.

The American adult educator Eduard Lindeman was one ofthose who did try to take the understanding and analysis of democ-racy beyond ritualistic invocation. To Lindeman ([1935] 1987a)democracy was “one of the grandest words in the whole of humanlanguage” (p. 137) but also one of the least understood and mostabused by hypocrites. He believed that most people “are democ-ratically speaking, illiterate; they do not know how to operate inand through groups” (p. 150). This meant that they lacked the skillto deal respectfully with difference, live with unresolved conflict,and accept that proposed solutions to complex social problems


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should always be viewed as temporary, as contingent. Lindemanbelieved democracy is present when “ultimate power resides in thepeople, in the collectivity” (p. 147) so that a relationship of “powerwith” between people—“to be so related to you that our powerswill be multiplied” (p. 144)—replaced that of “power over.” Hestressed, though, that democracy was not just a set of discourse pat-terns or decision-making protocols but that it also required an eco-nomic leveling. Political democracy required economic democracy,a point later emphasized repeatedly by Horton. For Lindeman“democracy will remain a grisly joke, but an ironic joke, unless welearn how to make it operate in an era of economics” (p. 144).

At its root, living democratically was seen by Lindeman as anadult learning process. It required its participants to study and be-come increasingly adept at practicing a number of democratic dis-ciplines. These included learning to honor diversity, learning tolive with the partial functioning of the democratic ideal, learningto avoid the trap of false antithesis (where we are forced to choosebetween either/or, mutually exclusive options), learning to acceptthe compatibility of ends and means (where we avoid the tempta-tion to bypass the democratic process in the interests of reachingspeedily a decision regarded as obviously right and necessary),learning to correlate the functioning of social institutions (health,education, and social services) with democratic purposes, learningcollective forms of social and economic planning, learning to livewith contrary decisions, and learning to appreciate the comedy in-herent in democracy’s contradictions. For Lindeman, then, learn-ing democracy was a central task of adult life.

Lindeman’s valorization of democracy has continued to exer-cise a strong influence, at least in American adult education. How-ever, since his death the radical social critique embedded in partsof his work has largely been forgotten. These days he is usuallyplaced in the mainstream of American pragmatism, well outsidecritical theory. Those parts of his writing containing an unequivo-cal condemnation of capitalism and individualism are rarelyquoted. By way of contrast, his emphasis on group work as the cru-cible of democratic process and on the importance of experienceto the adult education curriculum are well known.

Yet to Lindeman adult education was first and foremost a socialmovement through which people learned collective forms of liv-


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ing and decision making. In his best known work, The Meaning ofAdult Education ([1926] 1961), he wrote that “collectivism is theroad to power, the predominant reality of adult life” and that animportant purpose of adult education was “making the collectivelife an educational experience” (p. 43). This could not happen,however, as long as “warfare was the name of the game” in “the per-vading economic structure of our civilization” (p. 26). This struc-ture was based on “a doubtful competitive ethic . . . avowedlydesigned to benefit the crafty, the strong and the truculent” (p.26). Effects of this structure of unbridled capitalism were nation-alism and imperialism, both of which were “merely outward man-ifestations of this ‘pseudo-power’ which degrades us all” (p. 26).

I argue for Lindeman’s inclusion in a critical theory of adultlearning not because of his condemnation of capitalism. Linde-man was actually something of an economic centrist. In line withhis desire to avoid binary reasoning, he rejected an absolutist com-mitment to socialism or capitalism, arguing that “when in any soci-ety all primary functions are performed by the government, andno room is left for private initiative and action, democracy willalready have ceased to exist” (p. 166). However, as the most promi-nent American adult educator of his day and a continuing influ-ence on contemporary thought, his location so clearly within thepragmatic tradition deserves our attention. As pointed out earlier,the connections explored by West and Habermas between somebranches of critical theory and pragmatism’s concern for democ-ratic experimentation have been neglected. Yet, as Greene (1986,1988) argues, pragmatists such as Dewey (and Lindeman) werewell aware of “what would later be called ‘hegemony,’ or the ideo-logical control, implicit in the dominant view of a given society”(1986, p. 434). As the chief adult educational interpreter of thepragmatic tradition, Lindeman’s analysis of democratic processesand contradictions and his insistence that learning to deal withthese were central tasks of adult life have important implicationsfor a critical theory of adult learning.

Within the critical theory tradition, Jürgen Habermas is promi-nent in analyzing the processes and contradictions of democracy. A major concern of Habermas is to establish the conditions under which we can claim that decisions are arrived at in a trulydemocratic manner. As with Lindeman, Habermas is particularly


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interested in the way democratic process functions within smallgroups, and his thoughts on this have been described as a dis-course theory of democracy. Habermas argues that we can estab-lish an ideal speech situation—a set of conditions under whichdemocratic discussion optimally takes place—that can guide theway we set up group conversations on important community issuesand decisions. Although not a strict parallel with Lindeman’sdemocratic disciplines, these ideal speech conditions contain theopenness to new perspectives and the willingness temporarily tosuspend one’s own convictions that Lindeman also stresses. ToHabermas it is important that we understand how decisions arearrived at democratically because only those decisions that arearrived at in this manner can hope to be perceived as legitimate bythe populace. In his view we cannot be fully adult until we havelearned these democratic forms of communication.

What tasks might a critical theory of adult education focus onwhere learning democracy is concerned? One might be to explorehow adults become aware of and learn to live with the contradic-tion of subscribing both to freedom and democracy. As Baptiste(Baptiste and Brookfield, 1997) argues, democracy necessarily lim-its the exercise of freedom: “The freedom of interacting beingsmust be reciprocally regulated if their interactions are to be judgedas being just. Ethical freedom is relative freedom” (p. 27). Livingin association with others only works if we adjust our actions to takeaccount of their presence. So in order to ensure equity, democratsmust restrict the range of behaviors in which people can freelyengage.

This means adults must face the difficult task of learning to livewith contrary decisions that Lindeman (Smith and Lindeman,1951) identified as an important democratic discipline. They mustalso learn to be alert to the tyranny of the majority exposed by J.S. Mill (1961). In a famous passage from On Liberty (1859), Millcontended that when society mandates certain ways of thinking asdemocratically agreed or as desirable common sense, it “practicesa social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of politicaloppression . . . it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating muchmore deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself”(p. 191). This analysis of the oppressive control a majority can exer-cise in a democracy echoes Gramsci on the all-pervasive nature of


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hegemony and Foucault on power as inscribed in the choices andactions of everyday life.

A critical theory of adult learning might also investigate the gen-eral problem of how adults learn to live with the element of con-tingency inherent in the democratic process. Contingency—theacceptance of all understandings and solutions as partial, provi-sional, and continuously open to review and renegotiation—is oftenassociated with postmodernism, as Bagnall’s (1999) analysis of post-modern ideas, Discovering Radical Contingency, implies. Yet its rootsare in pragmatism and that tradition’s emphasis on continuous in-quiry and experimentation as integral to democracy. Learning tolive with this contingency is learning to accept that democracy isalways a partially functioning ideal.

We can also study the disciplines and conditions identified byLindeman and Habermas as necessary for participation in demo-cratic discourse. How do adults learn to explore and respond to“otherness,” to alterity, to the diversity of identities, values, desires,and expressive forms they encounter in democratic communica-tion? How do they learn to avoid the premature closure of con-versation occasioned by having to choose between mutuallyexclusive options? How do they learn to deal with decisions thatrun contrary to their desires until such time as these can be reex-amined? More generally, how do adults in democratic processlearn to deal with the distortions to that process that inevitably areproduced by the differential power possessed by community mem-bers based on factors of race, class, and gender? How do they learnto break with cultural patterns of communication so they can slowdown, remain silent, and listen carefully and attentively to whatothers are saying? Finally, how do democracy’s participants learnto reflect critically on its practice?

This chapter has proposed that embedded in critical theory are seven adult learning tasks grounded in critical theory’s centralconcerns—learning to challenge ideology, contest hegemony, un-mask power, overcome alienation, pursue liberation, reclaim rea-son, and practice democracy. The rest of this volume exploresthese tasks in greater detail.


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Chapter Three

Challenging Ideology

A while ago my wife and I were faced with choosing a junior highschool for our daughter who was finishing sixth grade at her stateelementary school (a Spanish immersion school in St. Paul). I didn’thave to think twice about this decision. One particular public juniorhigh leaped to mind with no conscious choice or weighing of alter-natives on my part. Our friends spoke well of this school, and it hadsome of the best test scores in the area. Obviously, then, this was theschool she should attend. This decision was ideological.

By ideological I mean that although the decision felt as if it hadsprung fully formed out of my own instinctive sense of rightness,it was anything but spontaneous. In fact the decision was a mani-festation of a set of largely unquestioned dominant beliefs and val-ues that lived within me. These values and beliefs did not existoutside me as a sort of ideological smorgasbord from which I couldchoose a congenial blend. They were me. Obviously (whenever wecatch ourselves saying “obviously” to ourselves we know ideology islurking close by) our friends’ judgment that this school was goodcould be trusted. After all, our friends are smart people (they mustbe or they wouldn’t be our friends!) and whatever they agree onmust be right.

It was only after my wife raised the possibility of our daughterattending other junior highs and started to challenge the sense ofobviousness that attached itself to my school preference that I real-ized how two core ideological beliefs had framed what seemed likean unconscious, instinctive decision. These were that (1) the morea group of people agree about something (particularly if we see thisgroup as our own peer or reference group), the more they are likelyto be right, and (2) high test scores on the part of students are an

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accurate indicator of the intellectual productivity of a school, of thecompetence and dedication of its teachers, and of the relevance ofits curriculum.

Of course, these beliefs might be right. After all, as Eagleton(1991) reminds us, ideology endures partly because it contains ele-ments that people recognize as accurate in their experience. Butjust because large numbers of people believe something doesn’tnecessarily make it true. In this instance I never questioned theself-confirmatory dynamic of peer group communication (“You’remy friend so what you say must be true otherwise the smartness ofmy choice of you as a friend is called into question”) nor the factthat our friends came from a certain race and class. Neither was Ibothered by the fact that I was commodifying learning by viewingit as a product, the value of which could be judged using anexchange economy indicator (the school’s test scores). It didn’toccur to me that the use value of learning (the meaning the learn-ing had for students) was thereby being ignored.

The other thing that made these beliefs ideological was thattheir acceptance served to justify and reproduce an existing system,indeed a whole way of thinking about a sphere of human activity(education). In Chomsky’s (1989) terms these were the “necessaryillusions” that allowed the system to keep on running with the sup-port of its members, even when massive disparities and inequitiesclearly existed. I accepted completely the assumption that theschool district’s much trumpeted indicator of a school’s worth (itstest scores) did indeed correlate with what happened inside thatschool. That a school’s test scores might be more indicative of theeconomic character of the neighborhoods within which it was sit-uated and of the desire of parents in this neighborhood to havetheir children score well and thereby retain the competitive advan-tage their class conferred on them did not really register. I knewthis intellectually, but it didn’t act as any kind of rational hedge orcheck against my instinctive sense of which school was right for mydaughter.

When a belief seems natural and obvious and when it serves toreproduce existing systems, structures, and behaviors, it is ideolog-ical. Ideology is the system of ideas and values that reflects and sup-ports the established order and that manifests itself in our everydayactions, decisions, and practices, usually without our being aware of

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its presence. When we are faced with choices in life and find our-selves turning without conscious deliberation to what seem like ob-vious, commonsense forms of reasoning, the chances are good thatthere is an ideological basis to these. The fact that these forms of rea-soning seem almost effortless, suggesting a commonsense responsein the same instant that we are confronted with a choice, is an impor-tant indication of their ideological nature.

These seemingly natural, obvious ideas have not just forcedthemselves onto our consciousness from some compartment in thebrain labeled “decision-making center.” Their immediacy springsfrom the fact that they represent the commonsense wisdomaccepted by the majority in our class, race, and culture. In theirapparent obviousness lie their subtle seductiveness and their hid-den power. The truth is that these supposedly obvious ideas alwaysserve some interests and oppose others. What seem like wisechoices based on transparent truths often end up hurting us with-out our knowing quite how this has happened. Because ideologyis so soaked into our existence, it seems objective and neutral,rather than partisan. This helps to explain how it manages toobscure the injuries it does us.

Ideology and Ideology Critique in Critical TheoryIdeology is the central concept in critical theory. It describes thesystem of beliefs, values, and practices that reflects and reproducesexisting social structures, systems, and relations. Ideology main-tains the power of a dominant group or class by portraying as uni-versally true beliefs that serve the interests mainly of this dominantgroup. This is one of the most frequently quoted elements of Marxand Engels’ analysis in The German Ideology (1970). The universal-izing of sectional beliefs happens through acts of commission (aswhen schools and churches teach as the values of all society thosethat serve the interests of a privileged minority) and acts of omis-sion (as when alternative beliefs are suppressed so people have nochance to consider them). As Eagleton (1991) writes, a critical the-ory perspective on ideology “draws attention to the ways in whichspecific ideas help to legitimize unjust and unnecessary forms ofpolitical domination” (p. 167).


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Put colloquially, ideology is present when we shrug our shoul-ders in the face of misfortune and say “that’s life.” When I was grow-ing up in England a popular phrase was “mustn’t grumble.” This wassometimes said in response to all manner of inconveniences, set-backs, and difficulties. “Mustn’t grumble” was the universal salve toease the pain of illness, unemployment, rising prices, falling wages,food shortages, power cuts, politically motivated bombings, unem-ployment, lack of access to decent health care, strikes, and the over-all realization that life wasn’t going to get any better. When peoplereally believe that they “mustn’t grumble,” then the system is safe.Grumbling, on the other hand, challenges the system. If enoughpeople grumble, they might start to hear each other making the lowrumbling sound of protest and decide to seek each other out to dosomething about a situation. If “mustn’t grumble” is ideology inaction then “must grumble” is the start of ideology critique.

The Evil Twins of Ideology: Capitalism and Bureaucratic RationalityTo illustrate what might be called the “classic” tradition of ideol-ogy critique in critical theory, I want to examine the ideas of threethinkers—Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Louis Althusser.Horkheimer and Adorno worked as researchers in the FrankfurtInstitute for Social Research and are usually cited as key figures inhistories of the Frankfurt School (Jay, 1973; Held, 1980). LouisAlthusser was a French Marxist who was influenced by Gramsci andwho in turn influenced Foucault. In the following paragraphs I re-view the work of Horkheimer and Adorno, especially the two well-known books in which their ideas are most accessibly stated: Dialecticof Enlightenment (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1972) and Eclipse of Rea-son (Horkheimer, 1974). Both texts examine the ways in whichthought and reasoning have become instrumentalized—discon-nected from pondering universal questions such as how we shouldlive and treat each other. When reason is instrumentalized, it ismade subservient to practical utilitarian ends. Diverting reasonfrom the study of universal questions, and attaching it only to theresolution of short-term practical problems, serves to maintain cap-italism and bolster bureaucratic rationality.


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In the preface to Dialectic of Enlightenment, Horkheimer andAdorno write that we live in a world in which “thought becomes acommodity and language the means of promoting that commod-ity” (p. xii). Thought as a commodity concerns itself with solvingproblems defined as important by the ruling group, such as howto become more competitive and efficient in the global market-place. The co-option of thought by the dominant order means that“there is no longer any available form of linguistic expressionwhich has not tended toward accommodation to dominant cur-rents of thought; and what a devalued language does not do auto-matically is proficiently executed by societal mechanisms” (p. xii).Thought is therefore viewed as being determined by the two cen-tral props of dominant ideology—capitalism and bureaucraticrationality.

The ideology of capitalism is analyzed extensively in Dialectic ofEnlightenment (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1972). Following Marx,Horkheimer and Adorno argue that under capitalism the value ofwork has been commodified. In other words, labor is seen as beingworth what people will pay for it so that well-remunerated labor isdeemed inherently more valuable. In a commodified world peo-ple develop their identity and calculate their sense of self-worth inpurely economic terms. They write (in masculinist terms commonin the 1940s, itself an example of ideology!) that “the economicmask coincides completely with a man’s inner character” so thatpeople “judge themselves by their own market value and learnwhat they are from what happens to them in the capitalist econ-omy” (p. 211). Moreover, people have become so seduced by thecommodities produced by capitalism that their lives are geared tothe pursuit of these. Commodities (or consumer goods) thusbecome “an ideological curtain behind which the real evil is con-centrated” (p. xv) as people are enslaved by the myth of economicsuccess. Consequently, “life in the late capitalist era is a constantinitiation rite. Everyone must show that he wholly identifies him-self with the power which is belaboring him . . . . Everyone can behappy if only he will capitulate fully and sacrifice his claim to hap-piness” (p. 153).

The ideology of bureaucratic rationality is explored in Eclipseof Reason (Horkheimer, [1947] 1974). This form of thought is seenin the belief that life can be ordered and organized into mutually


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exclusive, yet interlocking, categories. Horkheimer argues thatadults’ capacity to reason (surely a central concern of anyone inter-ested in adult learning) has been dominated by the shift to what hecalls formalized or subjective reason. This is an instrumental kindof reason, one “essentially concerned with means and ends, withthe adequacy of procedures for purposes more or less taken forgranted and supposedly self-explanatory” (p. 3). Formalized or sub-jective reasoning displays a dominance of means-end thinking. Rea-son is applied to solve problems of how to attain certain short-termsocial and economic objectives. In the scramble to achieve short-term ends, the application of reason to abstract universals such asjustice, equality, and tolerance becomes increasingly impossible.

When the habit of linking reason to the consideration of uni-versal questions is lost, then reason “lends itself to ideologicalmanipulation and to propagation of even the most blatant lies”(p. 23). When thinking becomes a tool to attain certain ends, it alsobecomes fetishized; that is, to have an existence and innate worththat exists separately of the thinker. Words become tools that arestripped of layers of meaning and dislocated from their history ofsocial use. Witness the cases of empowerment or transformative. Thesetwo words describe the way oppressed people come together to takecontrol of their lives and change prevailing power relations. Yet col-loquial English has defused them of revolutionary or political con-notations so that they are now applied to any situation in whichpeople want to change things to their advantage. Horkheimer la-mented that “as soon as a thought or word becomes a tool, one candispense with actually ‘thinking’ it, that is, with going through thelogical acts involved in verbal formulation of it” (p. 23).

This kind of short-term, instrumental reasoning is inherentlyconformist and clearly an ideological creation. Horkheimer writesthat “to be reasonable means not to be obstinate, which in turnpoints to conformity with reality as it is” (Horkheimer, [1947] 1974,p. 10). Mustn’t grumble, in other words. When thought has becomeinstrumentalized, then being “reasonable,” and by inference beingthoughtful and wise, is the same as agreeing with the ideology of thedominant group. This predisposition for reason to be conformistmeans that thought is “compelled to justify itself by its usefulness tosome established group rather than by its truth” (p. 86).


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Since the majority is the valorized established group in liberaldemocracies, people come to think that “the principle of the major-ity is often not only a substitute for but an improvement upon objec-tive reason” (p. 26). So the majority principle (the assumption thatif most people agree with an idea or course of action it is probablyright—remember how my decision on school choice was rightbecause all of my friends agreed with me?) becomes regarded as aninherently superior form of reasoning. The majority principle isbased on the (to Horkheimer) patently false premise that “men areafter all the best judge of their own interests” (p. 26). If people acceptthis premise, then it is but a short step to the majority principlebecoming “a power of resistance to anything that does not conform”(p. 30).

It is easy to see the relevance of Horkheimer’s analysis of rea-son for the kind of adult learning that occurs within formally orga-nized adult and continuing education. The majority principle—theidea that people are the best judge of their own interests and there-fore will probably request more of what they are already familiarwith—plays itself out under the guise of a benevolent needs assess-ment by continuing education program developers. The mantrataught in graduate courses in adult education is that we plan adultand continuing education programs around learners’ needs andthat the first step of good program planning is therefore to do anassessment of what those needs are. Accepting adults’ definitionof their own needs (their “felt” needs as they are sometimes called)is clearly premised on the idea that people are always the bestjudge of their own interests. In practice, learners often express adesire for programs that are familiar and recognizable and decidewhat to learn by reviewing what others in their peer group arelearning. Such an approach to program development certainly ex-presses “a power of resistance to anything that does not conform.”

The problem for Horkheimer with the principle of a demo-cratic majority representing people’s interests is that these inter-ests “are functions of blind or all too conscious economic forces”(Horkheimer, [1947] 1974, p. 28). Capitalism invades our psycheas “instinctual life in all its branches is increasingly adapted to thepursuit of commercial culture” (p. 112). This invasion extendseven to those groups—labor unions—that might be expected tooppose it. Horkheimer viewed labor unions not as representatives


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of an anticapitalist movement that was trying to establish an alter-native way of thinking about and doing work, but as ideologicalagents of capitalism. Labor leaders adopted a business ideology,worked to integrate workers into the social order, and commodi-fied labor by viewing it as something to be managed, manipulated,advertised, and sold for the highest price. The union’s job was toget the best possible deal for workers that the rules of the capitalistgame allowed, rather than destroying the game and creating anentirely new kind of society. Without champions to challenge cap-italism on their behalf, workers’ minds were therefore “closed todreams of a basically different world” (p. 150). The spread of in-strumental, bureaucratic reason meant that workers “have learnedto take social injustice—even inequity within their own group—asa powerful fact, and to take powerful facts as the only things to berespected” (p. 150).

Ideology and Ideological State ApparatusesBuilding on The German Ideology (Marx and Engels, 1970) and echo-ing Gramsci’s notion of hegemony, the French philosopher LouisAlthusser deepened the understanding of ideology in his influen-tial essay “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses” (1971). ForAlthusser ideology was a systematic form of thought control thatensured that people at all levels of the economic and social systemaccepted the system’s basic reasonableness. Ideology intentionallyobscured the fact that the system was based on certain values thatfurthered some interests over others. If ever the possibility of alter-native values was seriously countenanced, then the system couldbe challenged. But if the system was accepted as a natural phe-nomenon needing no explanation or justification (because itsessential rightness was so obvious), then the possibility of resistanceevaporated.

Althusser believed that people lived naturally and spontane-ously in ideology without realizing that fact. He wrote “those whoare ideological believe themselves by definition outside ideology:one of the effects of ideology is the practical denigration of the ide-ological character of ideology by ideology: ideology never says, ‘Iam ideological’” (Althusser, 1971, p. 175). In Althusser’s view wecan claim in all sincerity to be neutral, objective, and free of ideo-


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logical distortion when this is really an impossibility. This convic-tion of their own nonideological nature extends even to those who“manipulate the ruling ideology correctly for the agents of exploita-tion and repression, so that they, too, will provide for the domina-tion of the ruling class ‘in words’ . . . all the agents of production,exploitation and repression, not to speak of the ‘professionals ofideology’ (Marx) must in one way or another be ‘steeped’ in thisideology in order to perform their tasks ‘conscientiously’” (p. 133).To Althusser it was obvious that ideological managers would sin-cerely and strenuously deny the ideological character of their work.

How can people be so steeped in ideology without being awareof that fact? Althusser (1971) argued that this was made possiblebecause “an ideology always exists in an apparatus, and its practice,or practices” (p. 166) and because “the ‘ideas’ of a human subjectexist in his actions” (p. 168). These actions are then “inserted intopractices governed by rituals of dominant ideology” (p. 182). Inother words ideology lives and breathes in our daily decisions, rou-tine behaviors, and small-scale interactions. This takes us into theworld of Goffman and the framing of everyday rituals and also toFoucault’s emphasis on the inscription of disciplinary power in thepractices of daily life. Intimate gestures, routinized professionalconduct, conversational conventions, all reflect a wider orderingof power relations which is unconsciously confirmed in these prac-tices. As Giddens (1991) argued twenty years after Althusser’s essay,“the most subtle forms of ideology are buried in the modes in whichconcrete, day to day practices are organized” (p. 23). Ideology thusbecomes less a clearly identifiable system of ideas and more a par-ticipation in actions, social games, and rituals which are themselvesideologically determined. People participate in these practicesthrough what Althusser called ideological state apparatuses.

Althusser posited two types of socialization agencies that ensurethe predominance of the ruling ideology: repressive state appara-tuses (such as the legal system, police, and armed forces) and ide-ological state apparatuses (such as church, mass media, communityassociations) of which education is the most important. Ideologi-cal state apparatuses (his shorthand term for them was ISA’s) existmostly within civil society and ensure that the state reaches intoand controls that part of life. His thesis was that “no class can hold


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state power over a long period without at the same time exercisingits hegemony over and in the state ideological apparatuses” (1971,p. 146). Education as an ideological state apparatus works to en-sure the perpetuation of dominant ideology not so much by teach-ing values that support that ideology but more by immersingstudents in ideologically determined practices. These practices(such as chopping up the curriculum into discrete chunks to beabsorbed, measuring students’ learning and the quality of teach-ing by percentage improvement scores on standardized tests, andmoving people in streams and age-based grades through a systemat a pace and in a manner over which they have no control) areperceived as universal, rational, and obvious but actually supportcertain segmented ways of understanding and ordering the world.

By participating in the kinds of practices mentioned above,pupils learn “know how” “in forms which ensure subjection to theruling ideology or the mastery of its ‘practice’” (1971, p. 133). Edu-cational institutions become analogs of capitalism in which “therelations of production in a capitalist social formation, i.e. the rela-tions of exploited to exploiters and exploiters to exploited, arelargely reproduced” (p. 156). The rules of good behavior, of moral-ity, and of civic and professional conscience learned in school bystudents “actually mean rules of respect for the socio-technical divi-sion of labor and ultimately the rules of order established by classdomination” (p. 132). Of course, ideology requires that this learn-ing appear neutral so that education is falsely perceived as purgedof or sidestepping ideology. Teachers believe that they are impart-ing values of self-determination to students who are making a freechoice to accept or reject these. Neither group can see the ideo-logical web in which it is caught.

Resisting IdeologyAn initial reading of Horkheimer, Adorno, and Althusser can in-duce a pessimistic fit of the vapors. The situation they describeseems one of unrelieved hopelessness. If ideology is as powerfuland seamless as it appears (to the extent that we can strenuouslyassert our freedom from it while being simultaneously deeplyembedded in it), then what chance do we have of learning our way


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out? Yet, hope remains. Not all is doom and gloom from the tombof ideological manipulation. After all, these three thinkers are allwidely read and have been heavily influential. Can it be possiblethat millions of people have read them while all the time beingunable to break free of an ideological stranglehold?

Despite their pessimism (understandable after being forced toflee Nazi Germany), Horkheimer and Adorno did admit of thepossibility of resistance. Their reason for writing Dialectic of Enlight-enment was “to prepare the way for a positive notion of enlighten-ment which will release it from entanglement in blind domination”(Horkheimer and Adorno, 1972, p. xvi), given that “social freedomis inseparable from enlightened thought” (p. xiii). In Eclipse of Rea-son Horkheimer saw a hope for people to reclaim reason as a forcefor democratic social change if they were able “to interpret accu-rately the profound changes now taking place in the public mindand in human nature” (Horkheimer, [1947] 1974, p. vi). He opti-mistically observed that “there is increasing awareness that theunbearable pressure upon the individual is not inevitable” (p. 160),citing in support of his contention the fact that “the intensificationof repression in many parts of the world” (p. 160) testified to thefear those in power felt regarding the imminent possibility ofchange. Althusser, too, noted that ISA’s never functioned com-pletely smoothly as agencies of domination “because the resistanceof the exploited classes is able to find means and occasions to ex-press itself there” (1971, p. 147). As he succinctly put it, “Whoeversays class struggle of the ruling class says resistance, revolt and classstruggle of the ruled class” (p. 184). Even successfully communi-cated ideologies often contain contradictory elements—freedom,liberty, individuality—that challenge bureaucratic rationality.

So the tale of ideology is not just one of secret cabals of capi-talist mind manipulators skillfully selling to gullible masses con-spicuously false and distorted ideas which serve to secure the powerelite’s continuing supremacy. Instead ideology is a dynamic phe-nomenon. Writers such as Eagleton (1991), Williams (1977), andZinn (1990) discuss ideology in terms of its being contested, fluc-tuating, negotiated, recreated, and continually redefined. Eagle-ton (1991) for instance, sees ideology as a “complex, conflictivefield of meaning” containing themes that are “free floating, tuggednow this way and now that in the struggle between contending


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powers” (p. 101). He views the Frankfurt School conception of ide-ology as too closed, arguing that Western capitalist societies mixand match pluralistic and sometimes contradictory ideological ele-ments. For example liberal humanism’s emphasis on freedom andautonomy makes room for “variousness, plurality, cultural relativ-ity, concrete particularity” (p. 128). In everyday idioms such as “ittakes all sorts,” “take people as you find them,” “we’re all entitled toour point of view,” he finds a celebration of difference and a rejec-tion of monolithic orthodoxy that provides a fissure in the dyke ofmainstream ideology. Also, as Willis (1999) points out, the mean-ings invested in cultural processes (such as advertising) and cul-tural commodities (such as TV programs) by their producerscannot be rigidly controlled or circumscribed. People create theirown alternative readings that sometimes turn the intended mean-ing on its end.

It is surely also the case that institutions and groups deliberatelyand openly oppose dominant ideology in Western capitalism andlive to tell the tale. Religious figures earn the opprobrium of polit-ical leaders for daring to find a social and political relevance inChrist’s teachings. TV companies broadcast programs and pub-lishers put out books that criticize the government or cast doubt oncontemporary morality despite the efforts of lawyers and funda-mentalist pressure groups to put them out of business. Subversionsometimes sells. And sometimes we gain a glimpse of alternativeworlds in the most unlikely arenas. I well remember a Donahue showin which members of the American Communist party featured inthe documentary Seeing Red were electronically parachuted intoAmerica’s living rooms to talk in a direct and unedited way aboutthe commitments and passions that had driven them to join theparty in the 1930s and 1940s. Additionally, schools, colleges, anduniversities continue to develop programs and hire teachers whoencourage students to propose alternative curricula, question pre-vailing values, puncture authority, organize social action, and thinkdeeply about what the word democracy really means.

Ignoring the possibility that many teachers might not be ideo-logical dupes working uncritically within the educational ideolog-ical state apparatus is one of the major shortcomings of Althusser’s(1971) essay. Although he does acknowledge the likelihood ofsome “heroic” teachers working “against the ideology, the system


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and the practices in which they are trapped” (p. 157), he believesthat such individuals are “rare” (his word). To him the majority ofteachers are unaware of how their work could serve to nourish andmaintain the ideological function of education. This seems heavilyoverstated and condescending, not to say empirically wrong. Thou-sands of committed teachers work within the education system try-ing to stretch things a little here, challenge conventional wisdomand practice a little there. The vast majority of teachers I know arecertainly aware of the ideological dimensions of education, and ofthese a good many seek to skirt, question, or subvert this. At someadult educational conferences, one would be laughed out of courtfor trying to deny the ideological function of adult education.

In reading Althusser’s essay, it is impossible to escape the seduc-tively cozy sense of being offered the chance to become one of theelite few who can see through the ideological fog that hasdescended on the masses. It is as if critical theory is offered as a setof windshield wipers to sweep away the foggy condensation of falseconsciousness, myth, and distortion. There is sometimes a troublingtouch of triumphalist arrogance about all this. It feels like criticaltheory is portrayed as an exclusive club comprising members whohave penetrated an ideologically obscured reality inaccessible toordinary people.

Eagleton (1991) challenges this view of the masses as hood-winked or duped into accepting patently false ideas. He repeatedlypoints out that for ideology to work successfully it must possess whatits subjects recognize as a core of truth. In his view, “deeply persis-tent beliefs have to be supported to some extent, however meagerly,by the world our practical activity discloses to us” (p. 12). Onethinks of Ronald Reagan’s “morning in America” when readingEagleton’s observation that ruling ideologies “must engage signifi-cantly with the wants and desires that people already have, catch-ing up genuine hopes and needs, reinflecting them in their ownpeculiar idiom and feeding them back to their subjects in wayswhich render these ideologies plausible and attractive” (p. 15). Suc-cessful ideologies “must communicate to their subjects a version ofsocial reality which is real and recognizable enough not to be simplyrejected out of hand” (p. 15).

So the jury is still out on the extent to which ideology operatesas a seamless totalitarian pacifier. On the one hand stands Marcuse


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(1965a) arguing that repressive tolerance allows the expression ofjust enough dissent to give people the comfortable but misleadingimpression that they live in an open society. According to this argu-ment, an expression of difference perversely ends up confirmingthe superiority of the norm. As an example of this, Horkheimerand Adorno (1972) point out in their essay on the culture indus-try that “whenever Orson Welles offends against the tricks of thetrade he is forgiven because his departures from the norm areregarded as calculated mutations which serve all the more stronglyto confirm the validity of the system” (p. 129). In the introductionto his analysis of American ideology, Zinn (1990) also presses thecase for repressive tolerance in unequivocal terms. He argues thatwhile the expression of some dissident ideas is allowed, this dissi-dence is “drowned in criticism and made disreputable . . . allowedto survive in the corners of the culture—emaciated but alive—andpresented as evidence of our democracy, our tolerance, and ourpluralism” (p. 4).

On the other hand, Zinn himself acknowledges that “we live ina country that, although controlled by wealth and power, has open-ings and possibilities missing in many other places,” and he notesthat “there is a long history in this country of rebellion against theestablishment, of resistance to orthodoxy” (1990, p. 7). His enor-mously popular A People’s History of the United States (1999), now inits twentieth anniversary edition and an historical best seller, chron-icles this rebellion and resistance in convincing detail. Even asBarnes and Noble snuffs out the independently owned small book-store, traditionally the crucible of alternative presses publishing dis-sident ideas, it contradictorily sells multiple copies of Zinn’s works.In a Barnes and Noble store I recently visited, there were multipleworks on the shelves by Marx, Engels, and Lenin (and not all in the“Used Books” section!). As I walked in another Barnes and Noblestore, I was struck by a prominently displayed collection of copiesof The Cornel West Reader (West, 1999a) containing his three essayson progressive Marxist theory. Subversion sometimes sells.

When we turn to the Internet, we undoubtedly find monopolycapitalism linking the use of this technology to its own ends. Irre-spective of which search engine they choose, people are exposedto multiple corporate advertisements as soon as they log on. Butwe also find the Internet being used to coordinate mass protests


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such as the “Day Against Capitalism” demonstration in Londonand the disruption of the World Trade Organization talks in Seat-tle and Washington, D.C. If we take the case of critical theory as acounterhegemonic discourse, it is hard to deny the truth of Loewen’s(1995) statement that “the upper class has hardly kept critical theoryout of education. On the contrary, critical theorists dominate schol-arship in the field. Their books get prominently published and wellreviewed; education professors assign them to thousands of studentsevery year” (p. 276). As he observes, if we accept the truth of the ide-ological domination thesis, then “the upper class seems to be fallingdown on the job” (p. 276).

So we are not faced with an unscaleable north face of the ide-ological Eiger. As Foley puts it, the tale of how ideology helps re-produce a social order is one “of gains and losses, of progress andretreat, and of a growing recognition of the continually contested,complex, ambiguous and contradictory nature of the struggle betweendomination and liberation” (1994, p. 129). A critical theory ap-proach toward understanding adult learning is premised on thepossibility of ideology critique and the existence of those contra-dictions, chinks, fissures, and crevices mentioned earlier. It is tothe discovery and deepening of those chinks as a form of adultlearning and educational practice that we now turn.

Adult Learning and Ideology Critique

Adult educators reading the previous few pages will probably havebeen struck by several things. First, they may be wondering howrealistic it is to imagine that in adulthood we can start to stand out-side ideology and critically examine the beliefs and values welearned in childhood. Second, they might be asking how the con-cept of ideology intersects with the idea of autonomous choice thatlies at the heart of one of adult education’s most revered concepts,that of adults as self-directed learners. And, third, they could wellbe concerned about the way their own practice might be a form ofideological manipulation. It is these three themes I now explore.


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Adulthood as a Precondition for Ideology CritiqueDrawing on various bodies of work on political learning, adult cog-nition, and intellectual development, a good case can be made thatit is in adulthood that the incipient capacity for ideology critiquestands the best chance of being realized. This is not to say that chil-dren don’t notice contradictions. Children frequently say that adultsin authority distort the truth to suit themselves, say one thing anddo another, and send the message “do as I say not as I do.” Butdevelopmentally, childhood and adolescence are usually presentedas eras of dualistic thinking, of dividing the world into right andwrong, goodies and baddies. Not all subscribe to this view. A strongchallenge is made by bell hooks (1994, p. 60) who tells of herself asa child “using theory as an intervention, as a way to challenge thestatus quo” in her own family. She cites Eagleton’s contention thatchildren make the best theorists since they have not yet been fullysocialized into accepting as natural practices that clearly are unjust.This frees them to pose uncomfortable and embarrassing questionsto adults about rituals and behaviors that they regard with a “won-dering estrangement.”

In adulthood, though, episodes during which adults challengeprevailing, supposedly obvious ideas and practices are rarely expe-rienced as wondering estrangement. Ideology critique may be anestrangement, but it is a hurtful and painful one filled with culturalsuicide, lost innocence, and social dislocation rather than wonder.If we study empirically based theoretical constructs such as dialec-tical thinking (Basseches, 1984), embedded logic (Labouvie-Vief,1980), practical intelligence (Sternberg and Wagner, 1986), andepistemic cognition (King and Kitchener, 1994), we see that it isin adulthood that the pile of empirical inconsistencies that call ide-ology into question mounts higher and higher until, like a towerof books that has one too many volumes placed on top of it, thewhole stack of commonsense realities topples over.

Adulthood is a time when we are less and less able to hold thegrowing evidence of our discordant experiences at bay. The ideo-logical beliefs we learned in childhood concerning the essentialfairness of Western democracy, the importance of treating all mem-bers of society with equal respect, the assurance that if we workhard we will prosper, and that government always has the best


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interests of its people at heart are eroded for many of us by the ex-periences we keep having. The deep cynicism about politics andcorporations that pollsters pessimistically report can, from the view-point of a critical theory of adult learning, be seen as a hopefulsign, as a giant teachable moment for ideology critique. Cynicismabout leaders may indicate that the point of experiential overloadhas been reached for many adults who no longer believe that theworld is organized to serve the interests of the many or that left tothemselves things usually work out for the best.

That we should trust adults’ knowledge and awareness of theircondition was a familiar refrain of Myles Horton (1990), the activistand founder of the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee. Through-out his life Horton argued that adult educators and others in author-ity often underestimated the sophistication of so-called “ordinary”working people. Again and again he urged the importance of trust-ing people—particularly those that critical theory would have usbelieve are stupefied or ideologically hoodwinked—to know whatwas in their own best interests. He believed the oppressed saw theiroppression clearly and that adult educators should help initiate aprocess whereby people could build on their common experiencesof oppression to find ways to resist it. Adults were quite capable ofdetecting ideological manipulation. The adult educational task wasto help them confront and challenge it.

In the contemporary era, the level of skepticism among thegeneral populace regarding politicians’ justifications for their ac-tions during the Clinton administration (which was the adminis-tration in power when most of this book was written) was such thatpoll after poll supported Horton’s view. Adults told pollsters that thestrikes against foreign terrorism that were initiated at strategicmoments during the Lewinski revelations and at particularly em-barrassing times during the impeachment hearings were poorlyorchestrated ideological dust storms designed to divert public at-tention from the president’s problems. Popular skepticism wasequally strong regarding the moralizing by Henry Hyde’s impeach-ment committee to the effect that the impeachment hearings werea politically impartial event with no partisan desire by Republicansto humiliate a Democratic president. Neither did they swallow theRepublican line that the hearings were initiated only to avert a con-stitutional crisis and preserve the dignity of the American political


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system. So, despite the power of the presidency and the prestige ofthe House of Representatives, very few people took the ideologi-cal meanings from these events that their framers intended. Reflec-tive political skepticism and awareness of ideological manipulationfar outweighed gullibility.

The Ideological Formation of Self-Directed LearningA second theme in Horkheimer, Adorno, and Althusser’s analysesthat may strike many adult educators is the connection betweenthe concept of ideology and the idea of self-direction, surely thejewel in the crown of contemporary adult learning theory. FromTough’s (1971) hugely influential studies of adult learning projectsthrough Knowles’ (1984) placement of the tendency to self-direct-edness at the heart of andragogy to more recent critical evaluationsof the idea (Candy 1991; Brockett and Hiemstra, 1991; Hammondand Collins, 1991), self-direction has been argued as the distin-guishing characteristic of adult learning and adult educationalpractice. The idea has inspired countless doctoral dissertations(mine included) and given rise to an annual conference devotedsolely to its analysis. Part of its popularity is due to the promise itoffers for discovering a distinctive form of adult cognition or iden-tifying a distinctive methodological inclination exercised by adultstoward their own learning. Partly its popularity is because the ideaof rugged individuals making their own way across the frontier ter-rain of adult learning projects fits in so well with the notion of indi-vidualism (anyone can be president, we can all pull ourselves upby our own bootstraps) at the heart of American ideology.

Self-directed learning underscores the folklore of the self-mademan or woman that elevates to near mythical status those whospeak a narrative of succeeding against the odds through the sheerforce of their individual efforts. This is the narrative often sur-rounding “adult learner of the year” awards bestowed on thosewho, purely by force of will and in the face of great hardship, claimtheir place at the table. This is the narrative that President Clin-ton’s campaign team tapped expertly into in their video The Manfrom Hope shown at his nominating convention. That anyone canbe president is celebrated as a prized tenet of American culture.


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That this takes enormous amounts of money and years of court-ing, and co-optation by, big business interests remains obscured.

Ideology critique calls into question the foundational belief thatin self-directed learning adults make free, unfettered choices regard-ing their learning that reflect authentic desires felt deeply at the verycore of their identity. Ideology critique also makes nonsense of self-directed learning’s ideal of learners making autonomous choicesamong multiple possibilities. Instead it alerts us to the way that a con-cept like self-direction that is seemingly replete with ideals of libertyand freedom can end up serving repressive interests. For many learn-ers and educators, the image of self-direction is of a self-contained,internally driven, capable adult learner working to achieve her orhis goal in splendid isolation. The self is seen as a free-floating,autonomous, volitional agent able to make rational, authentic, andinternally coherent choices about learning while remaining de-tached from social, cultural, and political formations. This idea ofthe self is what McLaren (1993) refers to as “the magnificent Enlight-enment swindle of the autonomous, stable and self-contained egothat is supposed to be able to act independently of its own history,its own cultural and linguistic situatedness” (p. 121).

Ideology critique points out several problems with this notionof the self. First, it emphasizes that we cannot stand outside thesocial, cultural, and political streams within which we swim. In mak-ing what seem like purely personal, private choices about learning,we play out the sometimes contradictory ideological impulseswithin us. Second, ideology critique holds that conceiving self-direction as a form of learning emphasizing separateness leads usto equate it with selfishness, with the narcissistic pursuit of privateends regardless of the consequences of this pursuit for others. Thisis, of course, in perfect tune with capitalist ideology of the free mar-ket, which holds that those who deserve to survive and flourish nat-urally end up doing so.

A view of learning that regards people as self-contained, voli-tional beings scurrying around in individual projects is also onethat works against collective and cooperative impulses. Citing anengagement in self-directed learning, people can deny the exis-tence of common interests and human interdependence in favorof an obsessive focus on the self. Such a stance leaves unchallengedwider beliefs, norms, and structures and thereby reinforces the sta-


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tus quo. This concept of self-direction emphasizes a self that issustained by its own internal momentum needing no external con-nections or supports. It erects as the ideal culmination of psycho-logical development the independent, fully functioning person.

Fortunately, this view of adults’ developmental trajectories asleading inevitably toward the establishment of separate,autonomous selves has been challenged in recent years by work ongender (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule, 1986; Gold-berger, Tarule, Clinchy, and Belenky, 1996) and critical psychology(Morss, 1996; Burman, 1994; Fox and Prilleltensky, 1997). Thiswork questions the patriarchal notion that atomistc self-determi-nation is both an educational ideal to be pursued as well as the nat-ural end point of psychological development. In its place itadvances a feminist valuing of interdependence and a socially con-structed interpretation of identity.

So ideology critique questions the separatist emphasis of self-directed learning and demonstrates how this emphasis makes anengagement in common cause more difficult for people to contem-plate. A separatist conception of self-direction severs the connectionbetween private troubles and public issues (Mills, 1959) and obscuresthe fact that apparently private learning projects are ideologicallyframed. Policy makers can also use research into self-direction to jus-tify cutting spending on adult education. After all, they can argue, ifadult educators tell us that adult learners are naturally self-directed(unlike children who are dependent on teacher direction), then whybother making provision for their education? Won’t they self-direct-edly take the initiative in planning and conducting their learninganyway?

But atomistic, divisive interpretations of self-directed learningneed not be the end of the story. As I have tried to argue elsewhere(Brookfield, 2000), if we can demonstrate convincingly the ideolog-ical dimensions of an idea that is routinely enshrined in program-matic mission statements and privileged in professional discourse,and if we can prevent interpretations of self-directed learning fromsliding into an unproblematized focus on self-actualization, then wehave a real chance to use this idea as a foundational element in build-ing a critical practice of adult education.


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Adult Education as an Ideological State ApparatusA third point of connection between adult education and ideologycritique is the analysis of adult education as an ideological stateapparatus. Although Althusser’s work on ideological state appara-tuses (ISA’s) was directed primarily at schools (as he pointed out,the power to compel attendance is a powerful weapon, not alwayspresent in adult education), it is possible to view adult educationalprograms and practices as ISA’s and adult educators as professionalideologists. For example, while writing the first draft of this chap-ter, I was simultaneously teaching a graduate course on adult learn-ing and adult educational theory. At least half of the course wasdevoted to an exploration of critical theory and radical adult edu-cation. The course was a pass/fail course and used discussion inlarge and small groups as the chief teaching method. Studentswere asked to spend approximately one-third of class time readingand critiquing each others’ work in pairs or triads, and all writtenwork was viewed as first-draft work constantly in process. On thesurface, then, a dialogically taught course focusing in large part onideology critique and hegemony, with Gramsci, Welton, Freire, andHorton on its reading list, seems an unlikely venue for the repres-sive functions of ISA’s to play themselves out. Yet, one could arguethat in important ways this is precisely what happened.

After all, the course commodified education in that the pro-duction of course “goods”—students’ essays—was the focus of agreat deal of effort. These goods were then subjected to the edu-cational exchange economy. Students exchanged them with mefor a grade I awarded, with their exchange value (the pass, fail, orincomplete grade they earned as course wages) arguably over-shadowing their use value (the way these essays helped theirauthors understand their practice better, the theoretical illumina-tion they provided for students, and so on). Students’ learning wasorganized according to a top-down, input-output model of produc-tion. The top-down input was the reading for the course, my presen-tations in class, and my comments on students’ papers. The outputwas whatever learning was judged by me to have occurred as rec-ognized by the grade and evinced in students’ essays and partici-pant learning portfolios.

Learning was also organized according to a bureaucratic ratio-nality with a clearly designated time (1:00 P.M. to 4:00 P.M. every


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fourth Saturday) and place (room 212). At times I myself func-tioned as a professional ideologist; after all, I chose the authors,concepts, theories, and readings that served as the official ideol-ogy of adult education. I also worked as an agent of domination,controlling the course of the classroom conversations and patternsof student participation through nods, smiles, frowns, and directspeech, as well as having the final say on when to switch activities,call a break, or call it quits for the day. Also, the course took placein a private college which worked to exclude interested parties onthe basis of their inability to pay its high level of tuition or their in-ability to produce the correct cultural capital (master’s degrees)with a certain predesignated exchange value (a GPA of at least3.00). Clearly, then, subscribing to the surface forms of democraticadult education does not automatically stop particular practicesfunctioning in the manner of ISA’s.

Learning IdeologyAlthough Horkheimer, Adorno, and Althusser write about learn-ing in the texts outlined above, they do so in very general terms.Their work is full of broad philosophical and sociological claimsconcerning the way capitalist and bureaucratic practices conspireto distort the process of learning. In their studies of anti-Semitism,authoritarianism, and the family, however, the Frankfurt Schooltheorists do focus much more specifically on empirical studies, andit is to empirical work in learning ideology that I now wish to turn.

Viewed from one perspective, learning ideology is an oxy-moron. If we accept the terms expressed earlier by Althusser andGiddens, one cannot learn ideology as one learns a new body ofideas, skills, or understandings, since ideology preexists in indi-viduals’ lives. According to this view, ideology is a sort of ancestral,preconscious memory that is embedded and replicated in every-day actions and inscribed in material practices. Perceived this wayits acquisition is more a process of socialization into obviousness,rather than a deliberate act of learning. The intentional acquisi-tion of skills, knowledge, and understanding implicit in mostunderstandings of learning is absent from this notion of ideology.If ideology preexists, then the only learning involved is learning toperceive ideology’s already existing presence. Of course, if we take


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a Gramscian turn, then the focus shifts to studying how peopledeliberately learn to embrace hegemonic ideas, thereby ensuringtheir own servitude.

However, my position is that it is possible to talk of learning ide-ology as an active and intentional process, even if those doing thelearning are unable to foresee the consequences of their own ac-tions. Some of the best support for this view comes from two classicethnographies—one in middle England, one in south Texas—whichdocument how adolescents simultaneously learn to challenge dom-inant ideology while being formed by it in ways they do not under-stand. Both these studies—Paul Willis’ Learning to Labor (1981) andDouglas Foley’s Learning Capitalist Culture (1990)—see learning ide-ology as a dialectical process concurrently involving reproductionand opposition. As Stanley Aronowitz comments in the Forewordto the American edition of Learning to Labor, “The kids become thegenuine rebels from which political and social opportunists aremade while at the same time, reproducing themselves as industrialworkers. . . . People cannot be filled with ideology as a container isfilled with water. They reproduce themselves in an antagonistic rela-tion to the prevailing culture and ideological practices” (Willis,1981, pp. xii–xiii).

The prevailing theme in Learning to Labor is ideological self-damnation. Willis studied male adolescents at secondary schoolsin Birmingham, England, as they negotiated the transition fromschool to the workplace and into their occupational role as man-ual laborers. In his focus on the “lads” in the school (who were dis-tinguished by their disregard for authority and their contempt foracademic study), Willis argues that working-class teenagers activelyand enthusiastically embrace what they see as working-class oppo-sitional ideas and practices, while being unaware that this sameembrace ensures their subservience to the dominant order whenthey reach adulthood. Hence, “working class lads come to take ahand in their own damnation” (Willis, 1981, p. 3), yet “this damna-tion is experienced, paradoxically, as a form of true learning, ap-propriation and as a kind of resistance” (p. 113). In a poetic lamentto the consequences of learning an apparent ideology of resistance,Willis asserts that “for a specific period in their lives the lads believethat they dwell in towers where grief can never come. That thisperiod of impregnable confidence corresponds with the period


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when all the major decisions of their lives are settled to their dis-advantage is one of the central contradictions of working class cul-ture and social reproduction” (p. 107).

What are the components of the apparently oppositional ideol-ogy the lads learn? Four strong elements are learned freely withinthe lads peer group and reinforced by wider working-class culture.Self-direction—a theme familiar in adult education—is one that isparticularly prized. The lads learn a self-directed disregard for orga-nizational notions of time and space, constructing their own cal-endar of the day and moving around the school at will. Anotherelement is a learned skepticism concerning the value of mentalwork, with mental labor equated with the kind of conformism andobedience shown by the “earoles” (students willing to play by therules in the hopes of gaining semiskilled or skilled apprenticeshipsand employment). Learning an instinctive disregard for mentaleffort has implications for a critical theory of adult learning. Giventhat any attempt to challenge ideology in adulthood requires a sub-stantial intellectual effort, a learned resistance to critical analysis inadolescence makes it much harder to do ideology critique later in life.

A third ideological element is a rejection of language as a mid-dle-class affectation, a bourgeois indulgence. As Gramsci, and laterFreire, point out, a precondition for working-class empowerment(short of violent revolution) is a critical appropriation of dominantlanguage, so that one can use the master’s tools to dismantle themaster’s house (to use Audre Lorde’s [1984] phrase). Learning acontempt for language as an adolescent makes dismantling ide-ological obfuscation as an adult enormously difficult. A fourth ideo-logical element—the acceptance of a patently unjust system as partof the natural order of things—effectively nullifies potential resis-tance in adulthood. The lads recognize that they live in an unjustworld but see exploitation as “a random part of the human condi-tion” (Willis, 1981, p. 165) as unpredictable as thunderstorms andwith no systemic common cause. This is clearly a contemporaryillustration in middle England of Horkheimer’s ([1947] 1974) state-ment that workers “have learned to take social injustice—eveninequity within their own group—as a powerful fact, and to takepowerful facts as the only things to be respected” (p. 150).


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Building on and sometimes critiquing Willis’ work, Foley (1990)spent over fourteen years studying ideological learning in a smalltown in south Texas. He wanted to find out how young Mexicanos“learn a materialistic culture that is intensely competitive, individ-ualistic, and unegalitarian” (p. xv). The skepticism of intellectuallabor exhibited by Willis’ lads was shared by the “vatos” (the lads’Mexicano equivalent) who consequently moved into the world ofmanual labor predisposed against the mental effort required to dis-entangle dominant ideology. Foley argued that this predispositionwas inculcated by school, which had convinced the vatos that “theywere dumb about books and learning standard English. Years of fail-ure had taught them to publicly reject, but privately internalize, thecriticism of teachers” (p. 89). However, although Willis and Foleywished to illuminate processes of economic and cultural repro-duction, they avoid subscribing to a strict determinism. They believethat “there are many breaks, lags, antagonisms, deep struggles andreal subversive logics within and behind cultural processes of repro-duction which fight for outcomes other than those which satisfy thesystem for the moment” (Willis, 1981, pp. 175–176).

As already indicated, Willis (1981) identified four distinct ide-ological elements the English lads learned—self-direction, resis-tance to mental work, a rejection of language, and the acceptanceof injustice as part of the natural order of things. In a distinctivelyAmerican context, a number of writers have explored the compo-nents—the curriculum if you like—of a specifically American ide-ology which the vatos and others across the United States learn.Gross (1980) proposes three simple ones: communism and social-ism are bad (a belief which leads people to equate the expansionof welfare, health, education, and housing with “creeping social-ism”), capitalism is good (seen most blatantly in the public rela-tions corporate commercials that suggest that the only reasonbusinesses exist is to benefit humanity), and, contrarily, capitalismno longer exists (because it has been replaced by the mixed econ-omy which blends productive efficiency with a concern for socialjustice). West (1982) describes “the political unconscious of Amer-ican society” as “the sanctity of private property and the virtue ofcapital accumulation” (p. 132). In his view, “this ideology entailedan abiding distrust of institutional power, bureaucracy, and espe-


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cially the state; it also placed unprecedented emphasis on the wel-fare of people as isolated individuals” (p. 132).

The ideology of pluralism—the belief that we live in an opendemocracy characterized by freedom to choose among competingpolitical allegiances and a free press—is proposed by Zinn (1990)as the dominant American ideology. He argues that people learnthis ideology without learning the contrary position that ourchoices are actually very limited. We can choose between two cap-italist parties that differ only in the degree to which the extremesof capitalism should be moderated, and between newspapers, TV,and other media outlets controlled by a few billionaires (RupertMurdoch, Ted Turner, and Bill Gates). Spring (1992) demonstrateshow public education and mass media collude and sometimes col-lide in their attempts at ideological management (a term he learnedfrom a Bulgarian political refugee who had been trained as an “ide-ological manager” under communism). Ideological management isdefined as “the conscious exclusion or addition of information andideas conveyed to the public by mass media . . . to shield the popula-tion from certain ideas and information or to teach particular moral,political, and social values” (1992, pp. 3–4).

Like Eagleton, these theorists stress that the ideology of liberaldemocracy contains elements that act as a hedge against the kind ofunrestrained ideological management possible in a totalitarian state.Even ideological state apparatuses “maintain spaces and potentialoppositions, keep alive issues, and prod nerves which capitalismwould much rather were forgotten” (Willis, 1981, p. 176). Workingwithin these agencies are employees who have a “commitment toprofessional goals which are finally and awkwardly independentfrom the functional needs of capitalism” (p. 176). To deny the op-portunity for resistance and opposition, creativity and stubbornness,is in Willis’ view “to condemn real people to the status of passivezombies, and actually cancel the future by default” (p. 186). In adult-hood opportunities open up for people to challenge dominant ide-ology within the workplace, family, and community.

As Billig and others (1988) point out, ideology often containsinternal contradictions or opposites: “It does not imprint singleimages but produces dilemmatic quandaries” (p. 146). Appreciat-ing the essentially dilemmatic nature of ideology thereby becomes


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a major adult learning project, according to this view. The choices,decisions, interpretations, and judgments adults make on a dailybasis reflect the way their consciousness fluctuates between opposingintellectual and social positions. We take actions that are framed byour understanding and attempts at partial reconciliation of contra-dictory concepts: free will versus determinism, the individual versusthe collective, emotion versus rationality, creative artistry againsttechnical necessity, and so on. Billig and others maintain this isparticularly the case in societies where liberalism is a dominant ide-ology. Becoming aware of the dilemmatic nature of ideology cantherefore be understood as a central task of adult learning in whichpeople learn to think dialectically, a mode of cognition claimed bysome to be distinctively adult.

Dialectical thinking is marked by the ability to move back andforth between contextually grounded, subjective modes of reason-ing and universally objective rules and justifications. Schemas ofresearch developed by researchers interested in dialectical thinking(Riegel, 1973; Basseches, 1984; Kramer, 1989) posit a developmen-tally predictable cognitive movement in adulthood toward beingable to hold subjective and objective modes of reasoning in conge-nial tension. Adults accept that universal standards and rules areimportant guides for conduct and reasoning while acknowledgingthat context will inevitably distort these. One can believe that hon-esty is the best policy, that one should always tell the truth, and thatfull disclosure builds trust, while at the same time deciding that incertain situations it is best to tell white lies and hold back importantinformation.

Moreover, this holding of two contrary positions is not seen asschizophrenic, unethical, or contradictory but as appropriate to lifein a complex, contrary, postmodern world. Researchers in dialecti-cal thought argue that this ability is developmentally learned, a dis-tinctive fact of adult cognition. Consequently, a tolerance for andappreciation of this local-universal tension is found chiefly in adults.If we give any credence to this considerable body of empirical work,then it becomes apparent that Horkheimer and Adorno’s claims forthe complete dominance of instrumental, subjective reasoning overits objective, universal counterpart are heavily overstated.

This chapter has examined critical theory’s analysis of ideology,particularly the way ideology serves to justify and maintain inequity,


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but it has also argued that ideological control is never total, neversuccessful in completely blanketing all opposition. The contradic-tory nature of ideological control—the way that dominance is exer-cised while at the same time containing contradictions thatgenerate possibilities for resistance—is also at the center of Gram-sci’s concept of hegemony. Hegemony emphasizes the way peoplelearn to embrace enthusiastically beliefs and practices that workagainst their own best interests, but it also allows for the possibilityof opposing elements emerging, of counterhegemony. It is to thisintriguing extension of the concept of ideological control that wenow turn.


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Chapter Four

Contesting Hegemony

Have you ever seen a friend or group of colleagues behave in a waywhich you knew was killing them slowly and decided in the interestsof friendship to point this out to them? And have you ever foundthat your analysis of their behavior was met with scorn or disbeliefand an increased desire by your friends to celebrate, and becomeeven more committed to, these same behaviors? Then what you arewitnessing may be something other than willfully irrational self-destruction. Instead, it could be hegemony in action. Hegemony isthe process by which we learn to embrace enthusiastically a systemof beliefs and practices that end up harming us and working to sup-port the interests of others who have power over us. West (1982) de-scribes a hegemonic culture as “a culture successful in persuadingpeople to ‘consent’ to their oppression and exploitation” (p. 119).Hegemony describes the way we learn to love our servitude.

The theorist most associated with the term is Italian politicaleconomist Antonio Gramsci, described by Cornel West (1982) as“the most penetrating Marxist theorist of culture in this century”(p. 118). Gramsci was a founder member of the Italian Commu-nist Party, a journalist for socialist newspapers, and a strategist forthe factory council movement in 1920s Turin, which advocateddirect worker control of industries such as the Fiat motor company.In 1926, while a Communist deputy in the Italian parliament, hewas arrested by the fascist government (Mussolini had come topower in 1922) and placed under police supervision. In May 1928he was tried as a political prisoner, with the prosecutor reportedlydeclaring that “for twenty years we must stop this brain from work-ing.” He spent the rest of his life in prison, interspersed with briefspells in hospital, until dying in 1937 in a sanitarium days after his full release finally became legal. There could hardly be a more

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dramatic illustration of Zinn’s (1990) observation (quoted in Chap-ter One) than “how we think is . . . a matter of life and death” (p. 2).

Gramsci did not coin the term hegemony, indeed it is often asso-ciated chiefly with Lenin. Borg, Buttigieg, and Mayo (2002) observethat there is no “specific passage or section in Gramsci’s massiveopus wherein he succinctly and systematically expounds his conceptof hegemony” (p. 1). This means that subsequent scholars such asWilliams (1983) or Laclau and Mouffe (1985) have added their ownshading to the concept. Generally speaking, discussions of hege-mony locate the idea as a subtler, more encompassing, concept thanideology. As outlined by Marx and Engels in The German Ideology(1970), ideology explains how the ideas of the ruling class becomeuniversalized as the ideas of all. Hegemony widens this under-standing of ideology so that instead of conceiving it as a system ofdominant ideas deliberately designed to reinforce the power of theruling class, it can be viewed as embedded in a system of practices—behaviors and actions that people learn to live out on a daily basiswithin personal relationships, institutions, work, and community.

Ideology becomes hegemony when the dominant ideas arelearned and lived in everyday decisions and judgments and whenthese ideas (reinforced by mass media images and messages) per-vade the whole of existence. In many ways hegemony is the con-ceptual bridge between the Marxist notion of dominant ideologyand Habermas’ idea of the colonization of the lifeworld by capital-ism and technical rationality. It emphasizes how the logic of capi-talism, especially the logic of commodification discussed in ChapterOne, seeps and soaks itself into all aspects of everyday life—culture,health care, recreation, even intimate relationships.

The important thing to remember about hegemony is that itworks by consent. People are not forced against their will to assim-ilate dominant ideology. They learn do this, quite willingly, and inthe process they believe that this ideology represents their best in-terests. Hegemony works when people actively welcome and sup-port beliefs and practices that are actually hurting them. Thismeans that the state or ruling class does not need to resort to forceor coercion to keep order, which would be expensive and unpre-dictable. It is important to state, though, that Gramsci believedsome form of hegemony was inevitable in every society. The cru-cial task was to make sure this hegemony was exercised on behalf

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of the many, rather than the few. His goal was to replace ruling-class hegemony with working-class, or proletarian, hegemony.

As we read Gramsci’s elaboration of hegemony, there are sev-eral things we need to keep in mind. First, as with much critical the-ory appearing in English but written in other languages (Italian inthis case), there is the problem of translation and the misunder-standings that can result from this. Second, most of his writing wasdone under harsh prison conditions, involving censorship by prisonauthorities, so it was necessary for him to use a kind of coded short-hand in his work (Marxism becoming “the philosophy of praxis”is the most quoted example). Third, as his letters (Gramsci, 1994)to his sister-in-law, wife, and friends indicate, Gramsci suffered con-stantly from increasingly serious illnesses, often untreated. Conse-quently, much of his work appeared only in note form, as outlinesand sketches of future projects rather than as fully realized theo-retical analyses. To this extent, the prosecutor quoted earlier couldclaim some success.

Fourth, Gramsci was as much activist as theorist, concernedboth before and after imprisonment to further the communistcause in Italy by offering strategic and tactical advice on specificinitiatives. As well as the factory council movement, he was heavilyengaged in the Institute of Proletarian Culture, magazines such asThe People’s Cry (Il Grido del Popolo) and The New Order (L’OrdineNuovo), and the parliamentary work of the Italian Socialist andCommunist Parties. As a result Gramsci’s theoretical analysis isoften embedded in the discussion of educational policies, theatri-cal events (he wrote a great deal of theatre criticism), and intellec-tual debates pertaining to Italian life in the 1920s and 1930s. Thelink between these local analyses and an analysis of generic tenden-cies in the twenty-first century is often hard to make. And, finally, asa Marxist activist writing for other Marxist activists, Gramsci’s writ-ing often assumes a level of knowledge of Marxist philosophy and ofdebates within Marxist scholarship denied to most general readersand most adult educators.

So why should those of us interested in adult learning readGramsci? To me there seem to be three reasons. First, his under-standing of hegemony as an educational relationship has justifiablycaptured the attention of adult educators. Hegemony—the processby which people learn to live and love the dominant system of beliefs


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and practices—is not imposed on them so much as it is learned bythem. Hence, his most often quoted observation that “every rela-tionship of hegemony is necessarily an educational relationship”(Gramsci, 1971, p. 350). For Gramsci a central feature of adulthoodis learning hegemony. Second, in his writing on how to identify andoppose hegemony, he develops a theory of learning, particularly atheory of the formation and development of critical consciousness,that has relevance for contemporary work in transformative learn-ing. Third, in sketching out the ways education can be used to con-test ruling-class hegemony he develops the concept of the organicintellectual—an activist and persuader who emerges from anoppressed group to work with, and on behalf of, that group. Thisidea has been picked up by adult educators who see in it one wayto think about their practice as catalysts of oppositional learning.

How Hegemony WorksIn analyzing how the dominant class organizes, maintains, and de-fends its control, Gramsci emphasizes the all-pervasive nature ofthe process. Although he paid special attention to the influence ofthe mass media, he viewed the process of hegemony—of persuad-ing people to accept the way things are—as infiltrating all aspectsof life: “Everything which influences or is able to influence publicopinion, directly or indirectly, belongs to it: libraries, schools, asso-ciations and clubs of various kinds, even architecture and the lay-out and names of streets” (Gramsci, 1985, p. 385). As Williams(1977) points out, “hegemony goes beyond ideology” by conceiv-ing “the whole lived social process as practically organized by spe-cific and dominant meanings and values” (p. 109).

Hegemony is not just a system of ideas but “a saturation of thewhole process of living . . . a whole body of practices and expecta-tions, over the whole of living” (p. 111). It “constitutes a sense ofreality for most people in the society . . . beyond which it is very dif-ficult for most members of the society to move, in most areas oftheir lives” (p. 110). Knowing of hegemony makes it easier tounderstand how racism and sexism flourish unchallenged andunacknowledged. It is not so much that people go around loudlydeclaring bigotry, patriarchy, or homophobia, though this certainlyhappens. Rather, hegemony is lived out a thousand times a day in


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our intimate behaviors, glances, body postures, in the fleeting cal-culations we make on how to look at and speak to each other, andin the continuous microdecisions that coalesce into a life.

In Gramsci’s analysis, hegemony is evident in two domains. Ona political level, the state exercises direct domination through “theapparatus of state coercive power which legally enforces disciplineon those groups who do not consent either actively or passively”(Gramsci, 1971, p. 12). This is what Althusser (1971) subsequentlyreferred to as the repressive state apparatus. State coercive power isa last resort, a fail-safe device in the event of hegemony failing tosecure people’s consent to their oppression. In civil society—“theensemble of organisms commonly called private” (p. 12)—we seethe workings of hegemony as ideological manipulation. Here hege-mony is evident in the “spontaneous consent given by the greatmasses of the population to the general directions imposed on sociallife by the dominant fundamental group” (p. 12). If the workings ofhegemony in civil society are successful, then the coercive appara-tus of the state need never be called upon. The media, the schools,the churches, the networks of community associations throughwhich we move, all serve to convince people that the way they live isa natural, preordained state that works in their best interests.

The idea that certain institutions in civil society convince themasses that the world is organized on their behalf (thereby con-cealing the gross inequity that really exists) finds expression muchlater in Althusser’s concept of ideological state apparatuses. To re-emphasize the basic point—hegemony saturates all aspects of lifeand is constantly learned and relearned throughout life. If any-thing can be described as lifelong learning, it is this. The hege-monic relationship exists “throughout society as a whole and forevery individual relative to other individuals. It exists between intel-lectual and non-intellectual sections of the population, betweenthe rulers and ruled, elites and their followers, leaders and led, thevanguard and the body of the army” (Gramsci, 1971, p. 350).

As is probably evident by now, hegemony is a difficult conceptto grasp. Of all the ideas I’ve discussed with groups of adult edu-cators over the years, this is the one people have the hardest timeunderstanding. Subtle and elusive, it seems to slide from our con-sciousness even as we think we have it. Think of trying to nail downJell-O (in America) or blancmange (in England) and you have


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something of the struggle to get this concept clear. When the filmThe Matrix came out in 1999, Linda Kvamme, a participant in agraduate course I was teaching on adult learning theory, found thefilm helpful in illustrating how she understood the idea. This isentirely in keeping with the spirit of Gramsci’s work, since he wasfascinated with how narratives in popular culture both reinforced,and sometimes challenged, hegemony.

As we have seen, hegemony describes the process by which onegroup convinces another that being subordinate is a desirable stateof affairs. The subordinate group enthusiastically embraces beliefsand practices that are slowly killing them. This is the premise ofThe Matrix. In the film, machines created from artificial intelli-gence maintain control of humans by saturating their conscious-ness with a manufactured reality, while keeping them imprisonedin pods. The humans live wholly in the realm of illusion which isexperienced as convincingly real. The dominant group (the artifi-cially intelligent machines) does not have to struggle to impose away of life that the subordinated group (humans) would oppose ifonly they could understand their situation. Instead, the state ofsubordination is actively sought out and regarded as desirable.

For example, at one point in the film one of the few rebelhumans (played by Joe Pantialano) who has become aware of thehegemonic Matrix decides to betray his small band of counter-hegemonic comrades (led by Lawrence Fishburne). As reward forhis treachery, Pantialano asks the machines to return him to hisprevious state of blissful oppression where all aspects of his con-sciousness are controlled by the Matrix. Begging for our ownoppression is what happens when hegemony works smoothly.Those who are exploited enter ideological prisons built by theexercise of their own free will. They choose their own cells, locktheir cell doors behind them, and then throw the keys out of thecell window as far beyond retrieval as they can, all the while luxu-riating in a gleeful sense of self-satisfaction at having completed ajob well done. In a situation like this, there is no need for elites orstate agencies to exercise coercive control. Not only will thosebeing exploited work diligently to ensure their continued subser-vience, they will take great pride in so doing.

We can bring the concept of hegemony even closer to homeby using as an example the metaphor of vocation. Think of how


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many of your colleagues, perhaps you yourself, speak of adult edu-cational work in terms of fulfilling a vocation. The concept of adulteducation as vocation—of answering a calling and being in serviceto learners—appears irreproachable. Who could argue with thenotion that good adult educators are selfless servants in the causeof adult learning? This seems praiseworthy indeed. It marks us outas special compared to those money-grubbers who serve corporateinterests and global capitalism. I well remember leaving college inmy early twenties and being told by a friend going into industrythe riches he expected to earn by the time he was thirty and thekind of car he was going to buy as soon as he started work. My envi-ous resentment of his good fortune was eased only by my self-congratulation concerning my choice of vocation. Unlike mymammon-worshipping friend, I would be helping students realizetheir full potential thereby increasing the amount of compassionand criticality in the world. “He may be saving money,” I thoughtto myself, “but I’m saving imaginations, saving souls.”

Viewed from another perspective, however, things are not quiteso sunny. There is a dark side to this idea, notwithstanding itsmorally admirable aspects. Quite simply, this sense of vocation, offulfilling a calling to the selfless service of others, opens educatorsto the possibility of exploitation and manipulation. Vocation be-comes hegemonic when it is used to justify workers taking on re-sponsibilities and duties that far exceed their energy or capacitiesand that destroy their health and personal relationships. In effecttheir self-destruction serves to keep a system going that is beingincreasingly starved of resources. If educators will kill themselvestaking on more and more work in response to budgets being cut,and if they learn to take pride in this apparently selfless devotionto students, then the system is strengthened. Money can be chan-neled into corporate tax breaks and military expenditure as educa-tors gladly give more and more for less and less.

Vocation becomes especially hegemonic when filtered throughpatriarchy, as is evident in predominantly female professions suchas teaching. Again and again in my time as a university teacher, Ihave seen female faculty internalizing the ethic of vocation andbeing held to a higher standard regarding its realization than isthe case with their male counterparts. Women professors in depart-ments often become cast as the nurturers, known by students for


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their excellent teaching and advisement. Translated into academicreality, this means that women professors are willing to spend timeworking with students rather than locking themselves away in theiroffices writing articles and books in an effort to gain tenure. Sincedominant ideology presumes men to be less relational, less proneto an ethic of care and compassion (in short, less moved by a senseof vocational calling), they receive less opprobrium for beingunavailable to students.

Vocation becomes hegemonic when it is embedded in institu-tional culture and interpreted to mean that one should be willingto sacrifice one’s mental and physical well-being to the cause of stu-dent learning (which translates into meaning “for the overall insti-tutional good”). Imagine the scene: you’re an overworked teacherwho has too many students, too many administrative responsibili-ties, and too little time. A dean or department head comes to youand asks you to take on a section of students taught by a colleaguegoing on sabbatical. Your supervisor explains it will only be for onesemester until your colleague returns and that the students willreally benefit from being able to work with you since you’re sucha good teacher.

Then comes the kicker. Your supervisor informs you that theonly other faculty member available to work with these students isProfessor X. Now it just so happens that Professor X is a well-known idiot—a bigot with no sense of responsibility or compas-sion. You know you can’t live with consigning these unfortunatestudents to the clutches of an incompetent. So you agree to takethe students on but just for the one semester until your colleaguereturns from sabbatical. However, at the end of the semester, youlearn that your colleague has resigned the profession, or takenanother position, and a budget freeze means that no new instruc-tors will be hired. In the meantime you have formed relationshipswith the students temporarily assigned to you, and you just can’t faceabandoning them (which would be a betrayal of your sense of voca-tion). So now a temporary commitment has become permanent.

Cue the next semester. A representative of the faculty senateapproaches you to chair a new college-wide committee on criticalthinking across the curriculum. You have been chosen because ofyour knowledge of critical thinking, your ability to work with fac-ulty from different disciplines, and the intellectual credibility you


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possess in the eyes of your colleagues. The argument is made thatthis new committee, properly chaired, could be of enormous bene-fit to the students. It would help generate a common understand-ing of and commitment to the practice of critical thinking acrossthe university. Students would not be exposed to contradictory def-initions of critical thinking, and critical abilities developed in ear-lier courses would be honed and refined, rather than just repeated,as students moved through the curriculum.

Now comes the killer argument. You are told that another per-son has lobbied vigorously for the chair—Professor Y. Professor Yis supported by a faction known to be hostile to critical thoughtand to regard its demonstration by students as an inappropriatechallenge to teacher authority. This faction is hoping that by hav-ing Professor Y chair the committee the critical thinking across thecurriculum initiative will effectively be killed. Professor Y is alsoknown to be expert at divide-and-rule tactics and has a history ofcreating strife among previously harmonious committees. At thispoint (and very predictably), your sense of vocational calling kicksin and you find yourself agreeing. After all, the last thing you wantto have happen is for the students to suffer because of the ill-thought-out and retrograde changes you know the committee willinstigate. So now you have more students than you can possiblyhandle and more committee responsibilities than is reasonable,but you remind yourself that this is what fulfilling a vocation is allabout. Astoundingly, you feel proud of this situation! After all, youracceptance of these additional responsibilities proves that you arededicated to your students’ well-being, truly worthy of the title“educator.” You wear your enslavement with pride.

When vocation becomes hegemonic in this way it ensures thatyou start to think of any day on which you don’t come home ex-hausted as a day when you have not been “all that you can be.” Ifyou have any energy left for your family, friends, or recreational pur-suits, then you have failed to give your all to your students. If, how-ever, all you can manage at the end of the day is to microwave a TVdinner and watch a rerun of “The Nanny,” then you know you’vedone a good day’s work. A state of burnout becomes a sign of yourcommitment to your vocation. Anything less than total exhaustionindicates a falling short of the mark of complete professionalism.


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So what seems on the surface to be a politically neutral idea onwhich all reasonable persons could agree—that adult education isa vocation of service to learners calling for dedication and hardwork—becomes manipulated to mean we should squeeze the workof two or three jobs into the space where one can fit comfortably.Lived out this way, adult education as vocation becomes a hege-monic concept, an idea that seems a morally desirable example ofcommonsense wisdom but that ends up working against educators’own best interests. The interests it serves within educational insti-tutions are those of people who wish to run departments and divi-sions efficiently and profitably while spending the least amount ofmoney and employing the smallest amount of staff they can getaway with.

On a broader scale, education as vocation becomes a metaphorthat supports the commodification of learning, the turning ofschools and colleges into centers of production concerned to min-imize expenditure and maximize output. What is felt as a privatemoral commitment is actually a mechanism of control and a propto the maintenance of the exchange economy. As long as teachersview taking on heavier and heavier workloads as examples of theirvocational diligence, and as long as they take pride in the level ofcommitment this shows, then smaller and smaller resources can bedevoted to education. These resources can then be diverted tofund tax breaks for the wealthy or to assist corporations who wishto skirt or reverse environmental controls.

The subtle power of hegemony, and the chief reason for its suc-cessful operation, is its all-pervasive, blanket nature. There seemsno chance for opposition, no way to develop alternative possibili-ties. Defining the enemy, to use Newman’s (1994) phrase, becomesimpossible when the enemy is embedded in the thoughts onethinks, the actions one takes, and the relations one lives out on adaily basis. And even when hegemony is threatened, it is very adeptat regrouping its forces to define and accommodate oppositionalelements. Were it static and immovable, then the target would beclear. But hegemony is flexible, malleable, able to adjust and recon-figure its shape to try and block whatever revolutionary impulseemerges to challenge it.

However, all is not doom and gloom from the tomb. The hege-monic blanket is never broad or deep enough to cover all parts of


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the body politic at all moments. Hegemony is always being con-tested, to a greater or lesser extent, by elements of those it seeks todominate. So the hegemonic process is really a constant process ofrealignment as challenges arise to the dominant group’s controland as this group works to dampen these.

The contested nature of hegemony is emphasized by Williams(1977) who writes that “it is never either total or exclusive. At anytime, forms of alternative or directly oppositional politics and cul-ture exist as significant elements in the society” (p. 113). Of course,hegemony is ever watchful for these elements, “especially alert andresponsive to the alternatives and opposition which question orthreaten its dominance” (p. 113). This means that “it has continu-ally to be renewed, recreated, defended, and modified” at the sametime as “it is also continually resisted, limited, altered, challengedby pressures not at all its own” (p. 112). Consequently, Williamsargues, “we have then to add to the concept of hegemony the con-cepts of counter-hegemony and alternative hegemony, which arereal and persistent elements of practice” (pp. 112–113). Adultslearn hegemony, to be sure, but they also have the capacity tobecome critically aware of hegemony as they develop a revolution-ary political consciousness.

Learning Critical ConsciousnessLearning to think critically about power and control and learninghow to recognize one’s class position and true political interestsare major adult learning projects for Gramsci. His discussion ofadult learning is placed firmly within his analysis of the develop-ment of working-class consciousness and the political impact ofcoming to critical awareness. For him, the point is to understandhow workers learn an awareness of their oppression and how thisawareness helps them learn to organize for political transforma-tion. The revolutionary party then becomes the adult educationalagency charged with fostering this learning. Such learning is noteasy since it involves adults deliberately distancing themselves fromtheir childhood experiences and coming to see these as culturallyconstructed.

In his analysis of learning across the lifespan, Gramsci arguesthat in childhood our consciousness is socially formed: “The child’s


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consciousness is not something individual (still less individuated),it reflects the sector of civil society in which the child participates,and the social relations which are formed within his family, hisneighborhood, his village” (1971, p. 35). Thinking is always a socialprocess and subject to the pressure to conform to the ideas pre-vailing in our class, racial, ethnic, and gender group. Gramsciwrites that “in acquiring one’s conception of the world one alwaysbelongs to a particular grouping which is that of all the social ele-ments which share the same mode of thinking and acting. We areall conformists of some conformism or other, always man in themass or collective man” (p. 324).

This emphasis on the socially constructed nature of learning isan outgrowth of Gramsci’s Marxism. He argued that Marxism’s“basic innovation [was] the demonstration that there is no abstract‘human nature,’ fixed and immutable . . . . Human nature is thetotality of all historically determined social relations” (1971, p. 133).He sounds a distinctly postmodern echo in his declaration that “alldogmatically unitary concepts are spurned and destroyed as ex-pressions of the concept of ‘man in general’ or of ‘human nature’immanent in every man” (p. 405). (Again, we must keep in mindthe context in which Gramsci wrote when we read this sexist lan-guage.)

Conceiving learning as always being embedded in society, andalways reflective of particular group mores, means it is irrevocablycontextual. One cannot speak of adult learning in a generic,abstract way or as a decontextualized model of stages or phases.Learning is relational, always framed by the interaction “of purelyindividual and subjective elements and of mass and objective ormaterial elements with which the individual is in an active rela-tionship” (p. 360). The focus and processes of learning spring fromthe social contexts of individuals’ lives, and these change accord-ing to the political conditions under which they live.

Learning to recognize and challenge hegemony, for example,is linked to the development of political movements that fight classoppression, racism, sexism, and homophobia. This kind of learn-ing is not individually decided and determined, nor is it a series ofinternal decisions or private mental acts made by individuals some-how abstracted out from the world in which they move. Instead, it


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is socially framed and, in Gramsci’s view, linked to membership ofa revolutionary party. The content of this learning (what peoplethink is important to learn about contesting hegemony), theprocess of learning (the methods and approaches people use tolearn how hegemony works and how it can be countered), and thecognition of learning (the concepts, categories, and interpretiveforms that help people make sense of their learning about hege-mony) all reflect the learner’s situation—in contemporary terms,her location or positionality.

The major adult learning project that consumed Gramsci’sattention was the way in which adult workers developed a revolu-tionary class consciousness and the way they then learned to act onthis to change society and create a proletarian hegemony. Thisform of learning involved several activities recognizable to adulteducators today: learning to think critically by challenging com-monsense perceptions of the world (which were often organizedto reflect the dominant group’s ideas), learning to think inde-pendently as workers tried to distance themselves from prevailinghabits of mind, and learning to blend revolutionary theory andpractice. Gramsci studied these learning processes as they werelived out in the struggle for working-class revolution, and the adultlearners he was most concerned with were political activists andorganizers inside and outside the Italian Communist Party. But hisanalysis of adult learning has a contemporary resonance. Learningto think critically, for example, required the learner “to work outconsciously and critically one’s own conception of the world andthus, in connection with the labors of one’s own brain, chooseone’s sphere of activity, take an active part in the creation of thehistory of the world, be one’s own guide, refusing to accept pas-sively and supinely from outside the moulding of one’s personal-ity” (1971, pp. 323–324).

How do adults learn to do this? To Gramsci the “elementary andprimitive” phase of developing critical awareness “is to be found inthe sense of being ‘different’ and ‘apart,’ in an instinctive feeling ofindependence [and] which progresses to the level of real possessionof a single and coherent conception of the world” (1971, p. 333).Here we can see the lexicon of self-directedness so familiar withincontemporary adult education, but of self-directedness as a deliber-ate break with, and a standing apart from, dominant ideology. In


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Gramsci’s analysis the focus of self-directed learning is on adultslearning a temporary critical detachment from the culture, ratherthan of their using the culture as a resource to support learning proj-ects conceived within that culture. As we shall see in Chapter Seven,Marcuse came to echo Gramsci’s emphasis on the importance of atemporary detachment from commonsense, everyday experience,without building explicitly on Gramsci’s analysis.

A precursor to any form of authentic self-directed adult learn-ing, therefore, is the adult’s perception of herself as an outsider.The exercise of independent thought has powerful political effectssince “often an independent thinker has more influence than thewhole of university institutions” (1971, p. 342). Gramsci is carefulto point out, however, that independence of thought is not thesame as the creation of original knowledge. Self-directedness inlearning is evident in a powerful way, even if what is being learnedis already known to others. Thus “to discover truth oneself, with-out external suggestions or assistance, is to create—even if thetruth is an old one” (p. 33). This independent coming to truth rep-resents “the phase of intellectual maturity in which one may dis-cover new truth” (p. 33).

The “elementary and primitive” phase of learning a basic senseof independence and separateness is followed by a consciousnessof one’s own place in a hegemonic or counterhegemonic group.Gramsci wrote that working-class adults had two theoretical con-sciousnesses (or one contradictory consciousness). One of thesewas “superficially explicit or verbal . . . inherited from the past anduncritically absorbed” (1971, p. 333). This superficially explicitconception of the world comprised the dominant ideas of the time.It worked “powerfully enough to produce a situation in which thecontradictory state of consciousness does not permit of any action,any decision or any choice, and produces a condition of moral andpolitical passivity” (p. 333). This first superficial form of con-sciousness was hegemonic—a form of ideological control produc-ing quietism and conformity. When circumstances conspired tohave a group or class form itself into a movement to fight oppres-sion, then the second consciousness—critical consciousness—began to emerge. Thus, for Gramsci, “critical understanding of selftakes place therefore through a struggle of political ‘hegemonies’and of opposing directions, first in the ethical field and then in


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that of politics proper, in order to arrive at the working out at ahigher level of one’s own conception of reality” (p. 333).

This is an unequivocal siting of adult critical reflection in polit-ical struggle. Gramsci is saying that criticality is learned in the con-text of working-class activism and that a truer conception of realityis realized as working-class adults understand their common situa-tion and the need for collective action. It is a consciousness of sol-idarity on the part of the adult “which is implicit in his activity andwhich in reality unites him with all his fellow workers in the prac-tical transformation of the world” (1971, p. 333). To understandGramsci’s analysis, in other words, requires us to acknowledge theadult educational power of the workers revolutionary party. It isthe party that organizes the workers movement and, in so doing,triggers the development of critical consciousness. In this analysisadult educators are party members and activists, not classroomteachers who happen to have an interest in political change.

Adult Educators as Organic IntellectualsAs is clear from the above, Gramsci believed that the adult’s pro-gression from an “elementary and primitive” phase of realizing herpotential independence to the awakening of critical consciousnessdepended on the person being involved in a political movement,more specifically, in the revolutionary party. The galvanizing ofsuch a broad movement was partly the responsibility of party intel-lectuals. To Gramsci, one could not separate the learning of criticalawareness by the working class from the catalytic activities of edu-cators and intellectuals. Hence, “critical self-consciousness means,historically and politically, the creation of an elite of intellectuals”(1971, p. 335).

Before we look in detail at how Gramsci conceived of the adulteducational work of these intellectuals, it is important to stress thathe regarded intellectual processes—philosophizing, thinking, con-ceptualizing—as generic human activities. This idea is summarizedin one of his most frequently quoted phrases: “All men are intellec-tuals . . . but not all men have in society the function of intellectu-als” (p. 9). (As we read Gramsci we need to replace his use of “man”and “men” with the terms person and people.) Gramsci wanted todemocratize how intellectual activity was regarded. He believed that


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“one cannot speak of non-intellectuals, because non-intellectuals donot exist” (1971, p. 9). All people are reasoning beings and there-fore theorists. Each person carries on some form of intellectual activ-ity because she or he “participates in a particular conception of theworld, has a conscious line of moral conduct, and therefore con-tributes to sustain a conception of the world or to modify it, that isto bring into being new modes of thought” (p. 9).

Just as everyone is an intellectual in Gramsci’s view, so every-one is a philosopher. Whenever people use language, wheneverthey take action, whenever they develop guidelines of conduct,“there is implicitly contained a conception of the world, a philos-ophy” (1971, p. 344). Speech acts and everyday behaviors are thecrucibles of philosophical thinking, not an acquaintance withabstruse texts. Furthermore, Gramsci wanted to destroy the ideathat a cultured person is one acquainted with elite forms of aes-thetic appreciation. To him “everybody is already cultured becauseeverybody thinks, everybody connects causes and effects” (1985,p. 25) in ways framed by their culture.

If this is true and everyone is indeed a philosopher, then get-ting them to think critically does not mean introducing them tosome new form of higher order reasoning. It means, instead,adding a critical edge or dimension to their already existing formsof conceptualizing. Hence, “it is not a question of introducingfrom scratch a scientific form of thought into everyone’s individ-ual life, but of renovating and making ‘critical’ an already existingactivity” (1971, p. 331). Critical thinking in this view is not anentirely new, higher-order cognitive activity but a politicizing ofwhat is already a naturally occurring process.

However, although everyone can be thought of as a philoso-pher engaging in intellectual activity, not everyone serves the socialfunction of being an intellectual. When Gramsci uses the word“intellectual,” he is not using it colloquially as many do to refer toa group of sophisticated thinkers intimately familiar with multipleliteratures and supposedly operating at a higher theoretical levelthan the rest of us. For him intellectual work is organizational workon behalf of either the oppressor or the oppressed. Intellectualsare organizers, persuaders, and opinion leaders who work eitherto reproduce dominant ideology and secure the status quo or to bring the masses to critical consciousness by organizing


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their involvement in political struggle, primarily through the revolutionary party. The dominant group’s intellectuals aredeputies or subalterns charged with maintaining that group’spower by working in the institutions of civil society (schools,churches, community associations, and so on) to ensure that the dominant group’s conception of the world remain theaccepted view of reality. Contrasted to these dominant intellectu-als who are primarily concerned with ideological transmission andmanipulation is a revolutionary group of intellectuals, organicintellectuals.

Organic intellectuals are “elites of a new type, which arisedirectly out of the masses, but remain in contact with them” (1971,p. 340). These intellectuals help the working class “to conquer ide-ologically the traditional intellectuals” by their “active participa-tion in practical life as constructor, organizer, permanentpersuader” (p. 10). These intellectuals distinguish themselves byhaving “worked out and made coherent the principles and theproblems raised by the masses in their practical activity” (p. 330).They are able to formulate and communicate a strategy for politi-cal revolution in terms that the working class can understand, sincethey are themselves formed by working-class culture. The endresult of this effort is the establishment of a new hegemony reflec-tive of working-class interests.

The work of organic intellectuals results in “the theoreticalaspect of the theory-practice nexus being distinguished concretelyby the existence of a group of people ‘specialized’ in conceptual andphilosophical elaboration of ideas” (1971, p. 334). In other words,a necessary trigger to workers coming to realize their true situationof oppression and deciding to change this through political actionis a group of organic intellectuals. The existence of this group is cru-cial to the awakening of revolutionary fervor. Gramsci wrote that withregard to the dynamics of a large-scale political movement “innova-tion cannot come from the mass, or at least at the beginning, exceptthrough the mediation of an elite” (p. 335). Organic intellectualshave the responsibility to help people understand the existence ofruling-class hegemony and the importance of replacing this with pro-letarian hegemony. In order to do this, these intellectuals need acapacity for empathic identification with how it feels to be op-pressed. They must inhabit the lifeworld of the masses “feeling the


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elementary passions of the people, understanding them and there-fore explaining and justifying them” (p. 418).

This is why it is so difficult for well-meaning middle-class radi-cals to become organic intellectuals. Despite Freire’s injunctionsconcerning the need for middle-class adult educators to commitclass suicide so they can work in an authentic way with the peasantryand other oppressed groups (Freire, 1970), this transition is highlyproblematic. And what of attempts to commit racial, rather thanclass, suicide? How can White adult educators ever experience thesystemic racism visited daily on non-Whites? As Holst (2002) pointsout, discussions of organic intellectuals that focus on MartinLuther King (the emblematic organic intellectual in Cornel West’sview) tend to ignore the way the civil rights movement “producedorganic intellectuals from the Black share-croppers and workingclass throughout the South” (p. 85). Also, from the Africentricadult education perspective outlined in Chapter Ten, it is clear thatracial suicide by Whites is a meaningless idea. The central defini-tional component of Africentrism is that its proponents exhibitracial membership of the African Diaspora. Of course Whites canbe supporters and allies of non-White struggles and may sometimesbe invited to participate in them, but they cannot be movementorganic intellectuals in Gramsci’s terms.

I read Gramsci as arguing that a condition of being an organicintellectual is the educator being a member of the racial or classgroup concerned and not a sympathetic fellow traveler, howeverwell-intentioned. Myles Horton understood this when he insistedthat the literacy teachers in the campaign to help St. John’sislanders learn to read and write (so they could register to vote)should all be African American (Horton, 1990). No matter howsincere a White teacher might be, she lacked the racial member-ship to feel “the elementary passions of the people” which was aprecondition of her being trusted by the people.

In his adumbration of the adult educator as organic intellec-tual, Gramsci is clearly operating from a very different conceptionthan that of the adult educator as facilitator. To him the job of anorganic intellectual is to “organize human masses and create theterrain on which men move, acquire consciousness of their posi-tion, struggle etc.” (1971, p. 377). There is no pretence at neu-trality or objectivity here, no compulsion to see the oppressor’s


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point of view. The intellectual’s task is to galvanize working-classopposition and translate this into an effective revolutionary party.In this analysis adult education is a site for political practice inwhich organic intellectuals can assist the working class in its revo-lutionary struggle. His idea of the adult educator as organic intel-lectual has been acknowledged by people as different as the Welshcultural critic Raymond Williams (1977), the African-Americanphilosopher Cornel West (1982)—who views Black pastors andpreachers as organic intellectuals—and the aboriginal educatorRick Hesch (1995). To West (1982), adult educators who work asorganic intellectuals “combine theory and action, and relate popu-lar culture and religion to structural social change” (p. 121).

For Gramsci this organic intellectual work was part of a “war ofposition” to assist working-class adults in learning those elementsof the dominant culture (at a very basic level, reading and writing)that would assist them in overthrowing that culture and establish-ing a new hegemony, a working-class proletarian hegemony. Thiskind of learning is very far removed from the learning as joyful self-actualization ethos that sometimes pervades adult and continuingeducation programs today. For Gramsci studying was a job, “and avery tiring one, with its own particular apprenticeship—involvingmuscles and nerves as well as intellect . . . a habit acquired witheffort, tedium and even suffering” (1971, p. 42).

Contemporary IlluminationsSince Gramsci did not offer any detailed methodological templatefor adult educational practice (though he was highly detailed inhis descriptions of the factory council’s operations), there is nobody of work applying his approaches to contemporary adult edu-cation comparable to the way in which, say, Paulo Freire’s ideashave been interpreted for North American educators (Shor, 1987b;Shor and Pari, 1999; Shor and Pari, 2000). People don’t claim touse a Gramscian protocol for adult education because one can’treally be said to exist. This is probably a distinct advantage. As adulteducation commentators such as Mayo (1998) and Coben (1998)point out, the fragmentary, coded, and contradictory nature ofGramsci’s writings, including his educational advice, make it pos-sible for readers to draw multiple meanings from his words. In fact


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writers such as Entwistle (1979) have interpreted Gramsci as ahighly conservative enthusiast of didactic teaching. This ambigu-ity is one plausible explanation for his influence. In the absence ofspecific and detailed methodological guidelines for adult educa-tion, one could say one was working in a Gramscian way, yet use avariety of approaches.

Where Gramsci is concerned, I believe it is more a case of work-ing with a distinct purpose and spirit. The purpose is to developcritical consciousness among the people in order to combat rul-ing-class hegemony and replace this with proletarian hegemony.In this regard it is the revolutionary people’s party—the “modernprince” (Gramsci, 1957)—that is the chief site for adult educationalwork. The spirit entails working out an uncompromising politicalagenda that informs one’s adult educational practice. A Gramscianadult educator has a clear sense of who the enemy is and a sense ofhimself or herself as a directive persuader and organizer, rather thanas a nondirective facilitator working to realize learners’ agendas.

A contemporary adult educator who seems to me to work inthis spirit is the Australian Michael Newman. Newman positionsadult educators as activists unable to avoid taking a stand and fatedto declare allegiances. He does not place his discussion of adultlearning in the context of a revolutionary workers party in the cen-tral way that Gramsci does, but he does declare very clearly hisintent to work in a partisan fashion. Informed by a class analysis,he understands the adult educator’s role to be that of a directivecatalyst who chooses to take sides and works only to further thecause of certain groups. This unequivocal commitment to takingsides and to allying one’s efforts to those who have the least powerin an unequal struggle seems to me to embody Gramsci’s notionof the adult educator as catalyst, persuader, and organizer.

Newman’s elaboration of this position is best seen in two prize-winning books—Defining the Enemy (1994) and Maeler’s Regard(1999). Both books are “driven by a touch of anger” (1999, p. 175)and strongly condemn what Newman calls the liberal-humanisthegemony in adult education. This hegemony, which focuses onhelping people analyze their experiences to become aware of theirassumptions, in his view leads inevitably to “the voluntary suppression of organized action” (1994, p. 108). To Newman afocus on self-understanding can lead to self-absorption. As a result,


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members of oppressed groups are encouraged to divert their atten-tion away from the real problem of defining the enemy into a pre-occupation with their experiences as victims. Newman clearlybelieves that it is crucial to replace the liberal-humanist hegemonywith an activist hegemony aimed at creating genuine political andeconomic democracy. He states his case in the following terms:“Rather than helping learners look at themselves, we should helpthem look at the thugs and the bigots, the people who do not care,the people who intrude, the people who misuse their authority . . .by doing this we can encourage people to be outward-looking, tobe active and activist. We can help them focus their anger on thecause of their anger. And we can set up situations in which we andthe people we are working with think, plan, learn and decideaction” (1994, p. 144).

Newman grounds his conception of adult education in a famil-iar lexicon, that of helping adults think critically. However, his def-inition of critical thinking is distinctly unfamiliar to many adulteducators. For him it is irrevocably linked to the exposure andoverthrow of oppression, ruling-class hegemony, and capitalism.He wants to “restore to the word ‘critical’ the idea of laying blame;so that critical thinking should include identifying and exposingthose who are duplicitous or dangerous or exploitative or mon-strous or weak and who by being so cause harm to us and/or toothers” (1994, pp. 53–54). Quoting the words of three SouthAfricans—past political prisoner and then President Nelson Man-dela, assassinated philosopher Rick Turner, and poet AlfredTemba Qabula—he argues that critical thought involves a clear-sighted and explicitly judgmental pointing of the finger of blame.Along with the act of laying blame comes the commitment tochoose sides in a struggle and live with the implications of one’schoice.

Not for Newman the concept of the adult educator as objec-tively detached, selfless servant of whatever learning needs adultsdefine for themselves. Instead, “adult education for social justicewill be oppositional, and the learning within that educational activ-ity will be best constructed around an analysis of conflicts of inter-est and a definition of the oppositional forces in those conflicts.Learning for change is done by defining the enemy” (1999, p. 178).A major task of adult educators is to help learners identify the spe-


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cific individuals, groups, and organizations that are the perpetra-tors of injustice and to find out their names, addresses, and basesof operation. Adult educators can help learners give substance toabstractions such as oppression and hegemony by researchingwhether the enemies identified are main or bit players, generalsor foot soldiers. They can also study exactly how they wield power.In the mode of organic intellectuals, Newman’s adult educatorswill be directors, organizers, and permanent persuaders, workingin solidarity with those who share a common oppression with aview to naming, confronting, and defeating the enemy perpetrat-ing this situation.

Building on Newman’s analysis, Grenadian born adult educa-tor Ian Baptiste (2000) argues for an ethically grounded pedagogyof coercion in which adult educators help learners identify their“true enemies”—those who “intend, on principle, to frustrate thegoals of their opponent because their opponent’s goals stand inopposition to theirs” (p. 29). To Baptiste, adult educators oftenfunction as persuaders and organizers but choose not to acknowl-edge this. He argues that they already use forms of justifiable coer-cion but are queasy about admitting to that reality. In Baptiste’sview it is naïve and empirically inaccurate for adult educators toinsist that their job is not to take sides, not to force an agenda on learners. Like it or not (and Baptiste believes most of us do not like to acknowledge this), adult educators cannot help but be directive in their actions, despite avowals of neutrality or non-interference.

One of the most contentious aspects of Baptiste’s writings ishis insistence on the morality of coercion. Citing George S.Counts in his support, Baptiste believes that adult educators can-not avoid imposing their preferences and agendas on learners andthat in certain instances it is important that they do this. Some-times, in furtherance of legitimate agendas or to stop the perpe-tration of illegitimate ones, Baptiste argues that the adult educatormust employ coercion. At other times, and for reasons that haveto do with the adult educator’s wish to stop any challenge to hisauthority, coercion is used but masked by a veneer of passive-aggressive, nondirective facilitation. We all know of situations inwhich we or our colleagues have said that “anything goes,” while concurrently making it very clear (often through subtle,


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nonverbal cues) that the “anything” concerned needs to reflectour own preferences.

In Baptiste’s view a pedagogy of measured coercion is justifi-able if it uses “force sufficient to stop or curb the violence or injus-tice. The aim is not necessarily to annihilate the perpetrators butrather to render them incapable of continuing their pillage” (2000,p. 43). To support his case, he describes a situation in which heworked with a number of community groups on the south side ofChicago to assist them in reviving an area ravaged by pollution andmigration. As the neutral, independent facilitator, he was supposedto stay free of forming alliances with any of the groups involved.Citing his liberal humanist sensibilities, he describes how, in tryingto stay neutral, “I succeeded only in playing into the hands of thegovernment officials (and their lackeys in the community). Theyplayed me like a fiddle, pretending in public to be conciliatory, butwheeling and dealing in private” (p. 47).

In hindsight, Baptiste argues, the experience taught him thatin situations where there is a clear imbalance of power, adult edu-cators should take uncompromising stands on the side of thosethey see as oppressed. An inevitable consequence of doing this willbe the necessity for them “to engage in some form of manipula-tion—some fencing, posturing, concealment, maneuvering, mis-information, and even all-out deception as the case demands”(2000, pp. 47–48). He points out that if adult educators do admitthat manipulation is sometimes justified, then an important learn-ing task becomes researching and practicing how to improve one’smanipulative capacities. Through studying ethically justifiedmanipulation, adult educators can “build a theory that can legit-imize and guide our use of coercive restraint” (p. 49).

We can see in these accounts an illustration of how two con-temporary adult educators work in the directive spirit of Gramsci’sorganic intellectuals. Although she does not use the lexicon ofadult education to describe her organizing and activist work, Ibelieve Angela Davis (whose ideas are considered in ChapterEleven) is a third. In Newman, Davis and Baptiste’s emphasis onthe explicitly directive role of adult educators and the need forthem to be clear and convincing about the political goals they worktoward, we can discern Gramsci’s idea of the adult educator as con-


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structor, organizer, permanent persuader. Instead of starting withanalyzing the learner’s experience, “a kind of holy writ in adulteducation” (Newman, 1994, p. 94), adult education should startwith analyzing the enemy. This is an analysis that springs fromanger, from the adult educator’s consciousness of people being vio-lently mistreated and the need for them to organize politically tohave any chance of stopping this. Adult educational work flowingfrom a Gramscian analysis will be infused with passion, and adulteducators will have as part of their job to feel, understand, explain,and justify the elementary passions of adult learners. The overalltask of adult education will be to fight a war of position in whichadults are helped to acquire a consciousness of their oppressionand to organize in solidarity to struggle against that situation.


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Chapter Five

Unmasking Power

As a beginning adult educator, one of my earliest hopes was to or-ganize classrooms that would be as open and democratic as pos-sible. Adult education appealed to me as a field where the powerof the teacher was emphasized far less than in the technical insti-tutes where I had been working. With adults it seemed that class-rooms could really be power-free zones, or at least ones in whichpower was shared equally by teachers and learners. In my firstclasses I set up discussion circles and was glad to find that I did nothave to coerce people to speak. What a relief! Finally I had founda situation in which I could escape the responsibility of exercisingpower. Little did I know the extent of my naïveté.

The illusion that I had somehow escaped power stayed with mefor many years. It was fortuitous that my instinctive preference fordiscussion circles fit so well with the ethos of the field. After all,democratically inclined discussion holds a central place in the pan-theon of practices comprising the progressive-humanist approachbeloved of so many in adult education. This approach is usuallylauded for a mix of pedagogic and political reasons. Pedagogically,discussion is held to engage learners in participatory learning,which helps them come to a deeper understanding of the topicsconsidered. Politically, discussion is supposed to provide an ana-log of democratic process, a space where all voices are heard andrespected in equal measure. Mezirow (1991a) and Collins (1991),among others, invoke Habermas’ ideal speech situation—which tomany is exemplified in the rational discourse of respectful, demo-cratic, open discussion—as the organizing concept for good adulteducational practice.

My error was to confuse this ideal with reality. Just because myclassrooms looked democratic did not mean learners felt themselves

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to be in a power-free zone. Had I reflected on my own autobio-graphical experiences of learning through discussion, I would per-haps have questioned my assumptions a little more. My own studentmemories of discussion groups are about as far removed from thistranquil, uncomplicated ideal as they could be. As a learner I rarelyfound participating in discussion to be a liberatory, democratizingexperience; rather, I experienced discussion as a competitive ordeal,the occasion for a Darwinian-style survival of the loquaciously fittest.Much of my energy was consumed by performance anxiety. I knewI was supposed to perform brilliantly but was unsure what this bril-liance was supposed to look like. Participating in discussion thusbecame translated into a form of competitive intellectual besting inwhich triumph was claimed by those who spoke most frequently ormade the most brilliantly articulate and insightful comments. Iknew I was engaged in the same kind of name-dropping that gripsguests at an academic cocktail party as they struggle for recognitionand status. My participation was framed by the need to speak asoften and intelligently as I could, thereby impressing the teacherwith how smart I was. The idea that I might be involved in a groupcreation of knowledge never occurred to me. I remember thinkingthat the conversation was in no sense open but that my tutor wasusing it as a means of checking the level of my understanding andfamiliarity with the course’s content.

Had the work of Michel Foucault—the French social theorist—been available to me as an undergraduate, I would have understoodbetter my feeling that in discussions I was under the surveillance ofmy peers and teachers and expected to perform according to somedimly sensed norm of what good participation looked like. I wouldalso have realized that the discussion groups of which I was a mem-ber ran according to a regime of truth. Regimes of truth are “thetypes of discourse which it [society] accepts and makes function astrue” (Foucault, 1980, p. 131), and they operate to support teach-ers in settings that appear to be power free. At the time I put myunhappy experience of discussion participation down to my ownlack of intelligence and confidence, and dismissed any doubts I hadthat discussion might not be as democratically liberating as I’d sup-posed. When I subsequently began working as a teacher, my expe-riences as a participant in discussion meant nothing to me. I wasgoing to teach through discussion because holding discussions was

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inherently democratic, a clear example of teacher power being usedin an animating, liberating way to bring students into voice and pro-vide them with a classroom analog of democracy.

In believing that power could be exercised unequivocally foreither good or evil and that one could recognize emancipatory usesof power in practices such as discussion circles and learning jour-nals in which adults’ voices and experiences were affirmed, I wassimilar to many of my adult educational colleagues. Like them Iviewed power as a Janus-like phenomenon, presenting two contra-dictory faces—repressive and liberatory. Repressive power is seenas constraining and coercing, bending its subjects to its will. Liber-atory power animates and activates, helping people take control oftheir lives. Consequently, in adult education the release of libera-tory power is prized as a core process.

In the critical theory tradition, however, it is the repressive faceof power that is most strikingly presented. Here the emphasis is onthe ways state power is organized to lull people into submission tothe dominant order, primarily through its organs of ideologicalmanipulation (including adult education). This is the function ofAlthusser’s ideological state apparatuses (ISA’s). When ISA’s fail toreproduce the dominant culture and secure consent to its contin-ued hegemony, then repressive state apparatuses (the military,police, National Guard) are called into play to confront and quellrevolution. Liberatory power is present in critical theory too, par-ticularly in the analysis of workers’ solidarity, revolutionary socialmovements, and the possibility of counterhegemony. But on thewhole this face is less observable. Critical theory generates a Wag-nerian wall of sound around the evils of repressive state power thatsometimes drowns out the plaintive flute notes of power as a forcefor liberation.

In adult education, however, the converse is true. Here the lib-eratory face of power turns its gaze full force on the field. Adulteducators talk emphatically of empowerment as a process throughwhich adult learners find their voices and develop the self-confi-dence to take control of their lives. The possibility of converting“power over” learners into “power with” them (a formulation de-vised by Mary Parker Follett and popularized within adult educa-tional circles by Lindeman) continues to this day to exercise a holdon educators’ imaginations (Kreisberg, 1992). This determination


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to empower adults signifies to many adult educators what is dis-tinctive and admirable about the field. Show up at a professionalgathering of adult educators such as the American Association forAdult and Continuing Education, the National Institute for AdultContinuing Education (in the United Kingdom), or the AustralianAssociation for Adult Education, and sooner or later conferenceparticipants will point with pride to the empowering aspects oftheir practice.

A critique of this bipolar approach to understanding power liesat the heart of the work of Michel Foucault, the French social the-orist. Foucault is one of the most provocative voices of critique anddissonance internal to the critical tradition, and for progressivelyinclined adult educators his analysis of how apparently emancipa-tory adult educational practices often contain oppressive dimen-sions is particularly (but usefully) disturbing. In his view repressionand liberation coexist to different degrees wherever power is pre-sent. Hence, “it would not be possible for power relations to existwithout points of subordination which, by definition, are means ofescape” (Foucault, 1982, p. 225). Furthermore, the simple classifi-cation of power as either good or evil is, for Foucault, hopelesslywrong. Power is far more complex, capable of being experiencedas repressive and liberatory in the same situation. As we shall seein this chapter, Foucault shakes up the confident belief that powercan be bent to our will so that it can be experienced by recipientsthe way we intend.

Foucault (who died in 1984) wrote historical analyses of mad-ness, sexuality, punishment, and the way discourses emerge thatconstruct dominant understandings of these. A unifying concernrunning through all his writings is the understanding of power.Foucault maintains that in modern society sovereign power (powerexercised from above by a clearly discernible authority such as themonarch or the president) has been replaced by disciplinarypower; that is, power that is exercised by people on themselves inthe specific day-to-day practices of their lives. It is easy for adulteducators to focus on sovereign power—the arrogant teacher, theunresponsive administrator, the co-opting of literacy training orworkplace learning by the needs of capitalism voiced by corpora-tions and governments, and so on. We often think of sovereignpower as the enemy, and there is some comfort in feeling we have

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identified our enemy and can work to subvert or confront it. It ismuch harder for adult educators to focus on their collusion in andexercise of disciplinary power and surveillance. Reading Foucaultshould unnerve and unsettle any adult educator who feels she orhe is clearly on the side of emancipatory goodness and truth. Fou-cault’s work problematizes critical adult education in a productivelydisturbing way and in so doing helps adult educators guard againstthe arrogant certainty that they are free of any authoritarian ormanipulative dimensions to their practice.

Let’s return to the example of an adult education discussiongroup. Foucault can help us understand such a group as a com-plex mix of power-laden practices. His analysis prompts us to con-sider the way disciplinary power is exercised or the way participantsfeel subject to a certain form of surveillance while superficially in-habiting a liberatory space. In practices such as the raising of handsto signify one wants to speak, the way eye contact is made betweenstudents (or between students and teacher to confer the messagethat now a chosen participant can speak), the nods of participantand leader approval to register that a particularly insightful com-ment has been made, the preferred seating arrangement (usuallya circle), and the form of speech and terminology that is approved,a norm is subtly, implicitly communicated regarding the “correct”or “appropriate” form of participation.

It is clear that the discussion group format has not removedteacher power, it has merely reconfigured it in a less overt mannerand hidden it behind surface forms and processes that appear free.In fact, supposedly democratic, free discussion groups can func-tion very effectively to bolster people’s willingness to submit toauthority. In Foucault’s view this is only to be expected. Heobserves that modern society is so complex that a permanent armyof police and informers would be necessary to make sure peopleaccepted prevailing power relations. Since this is logistically impos-sible, he argues that overt surveillance has been replaced by self-surveillance—that we monitor and censor our own thoughts andbehaviors in discussion groups and elsewhere.

Anyone who claims that adult education is about empoweringadult learners (in my experience a majority of those who identifythemselves as working within the field) must engage with Foucault’swork. The fact that his writing is sometimes hard to follow means it


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is easy to give up on him. But the struggle to understand and applyhim is worth it. Without an appreciation of Foucault’s ideas, adulteducators often end up with an incomplete and naïve understand-ing of how power manifests itself in adult educational processes. Hiswork is crucial in helping us learn to recognize the presence ofpower in our daily practices, particularly the false face of apparentlybeneficent power exercised to help adult learners realize their fullpotential.

Foucault as a Critical Theorist?The subheading above is posed as a question because Foucault isoften placed outside critical theory and described as a poststruc-turalist or postmodernist. However, in a discussion of his intellec-tual formation, he recalls how “critical theory was hardly known inFrance and the Frankfurt School was practically unheard of” (Fou-cault, 1988a, p. 26) at the same time as he was producing some ofhis most important work. In that same interview, he shares how hisline of analysis is very similar to that of critical theory and admitsthat “if I had been familiar with the Frankfurt School . . . I wouldnot have said a number of stupid things that I did say and I wouldhave avoided many of the detours which I made while trying topursue my own humble path—when, meanwhile, avenues hadbeen opened up by the Frankfurt School” (p. 26). In my view Fou-cault does meet the two conditions identified in Chapter One asintegral to critical theory. First, he focuses on how existing powerrelations (such as dominant discourses and regimes of truth) re-produce themselves, and in doing so he draws on Marx. Althoughhe does not consistently put Marx in the foreground, much of hiswork is in the form of a talking back to Marxist conceptions of sov-ereign power. Second, he adopts a self-critical attitude to his owntheoretical formulations of power. Let me address each of thesepoints in turn.

Given that citations of Marxist thought are rare in Foucault’swork, it is easy to conclude that Foucault viewed Marx as an irrel-evance. He certainly condemned those who uncritically viewedMarxist doctrine as representing a sort of Biblical, revealed truthof political economy that justified coercion and repression in theSoviet Union and elsewhere around the world. In an interview on

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intellectual history, he stated that he desired “the unburdening andliberation of Marx in relation to party dogma, which has con-strained it, touted it, and brandished it for so long” (Foucault,1988a, p. 45). Furthermore, precisely because the Left expectedhim to cite Marx in his footnotes, he gleefully declared that “I wascareful to steer clear of that” (p. 46). In another interview inPower/Knowledge (1980), he admitted that he liked to play a gamewith his readers of using Marxist forms of analysis without reveal-ing that this was his intent. In his own words, “I quote Marx with-out saying so” (p. 52). In this interview Foucault is quite explicit inacknowledging the ways in which Marx’s work formed the back-ground to his (Foucault’s) own analysis of power. He declares, “It isimpossible at the present time to write history without using awhole range of concepts directly or indirectly linked to Marx’sthought and situating oneself within a horizon of thought whichhas been defined and described by Marx” (p. 53).

An example of Foucault’s debt to Marx is his contention thatthe move from sovereign to disciplinary power is a function of therise of capitalism. In his view, “the growth of a capitalist economygave rise to the specific modality of disciplinary power” (1977a,p. 221) which “is exercised the way it is in order to maintain capi-talist exploitation” (1977b, p. 216). To Foucault, “once capitalismhad physically entrusted wealth, in the form of raw materials andmeans of production, to popular hands, it became absolutely essen-tial to protect this wealth.” This protective effort gave rise to a “for-midable layer of moralization deposited on the nineteenth-centurypopulation” involving “immense campaigns to christianize theworkers.” In particular, it became “absolutely necessary to consti-tute the populace as a moral subject and to break its commercewith criminality.” In other words, delinquency as a category de-scribing antisocial, disruptive behavior was invented to keep behav-iors such as stealing and malingering out of factories and therebyprevent production being threatened. This led to the segregationof delinquents—“vice-ridden instigators of grave social perils”—from the law-abiding majority of poor people (1980, p. 41).

Clearly, then, Foucault positions this part of his analysis in rela-tion to Marx. However, he is critical of totalizing Marxist notionsof economic determinism and of an oversimplistic reliance on thedivision between the material base of society and the ideological


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superstructure. He questions the model of ideological manipu-lation and economic functionality in which “power is conceivedprimarily in terms of the role it plays in the maintenance simulta-neously of the relations of production and of a class domination”(1980, p. 88) arguing that we need “a non-economic analysis ofpower” (p. 89). To Foucault power is not always in a subordinateposition to the economy. Those with less income or consumergoods are not always powerless. Neither is power a commodity tobe possessed.

A starting point of his analysis is “that power is neither given,nor exchanged, nor recovered, but rather exercised, and that itonly exists in action” (p. 89). In Habermas’ view this analysis “rad-icalizes Horkheimer and Adorno’s critique of instrumental reasonto make it a theory of the Eternal Return of power” (Habermas,1989a, p. 52). Cornel West too reminds us of Foucault’s intellec-tual history: “Foucault cannot be understood without understand-ing his early years in the Communist Party, his polemic against theFrench Left, the degree to which a Marxist culture was so deeplyinfluential on the Left Bank, and Foucault’s own attempts to cre-ate new left space in relation to those various tendencies and ele-ments” (West, 1993a, p. 95).

In this critical revisiting of Marx, Foucault displays the self-crit-ical posture that I argued in Chapter One needs to be present if atheory is to be called critical. He challenged any uncritical ven-eration of ideas arguing instead that “the only valid tribute tothought . . . is precisely to use it, to deform it, to make it groan andprotest” (1980, p. 54). His own writings and interviews are pep-pered with references to the hypothetical, tentative nature of hiswork and to the way it is offered to the world to provoke responses,initiate debate, and trigger refutation. Foucault believes that hiswriting “does not have the function of a proof. It exists as a sort ofprelude, to explore the keyboard, sketch out the themes and seehow people react, what will be criticized, what will be misunder-stood, and what will cause resentment” (1980, p. 193).

He is also quite ready to disavow his earlier work. At the end ofan interview with two geographers, he admits the merits of theircriticism that he has used spatial metaphors and geographical con-structs without acknowledging their source, declaring that “I haveenjoyed this discussion with you because I’ve changed my mind

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since we started” (1980, p. 77). Though Habermas (1987b) has crit-icized Foucault for ignoring the normative basis of his own posi-tion and for making false generalities, he pays tribute to Foucault’srelentless pursuit of contradictions within his own position, as wellas in his analysis of how power invades the lifeworld. Referring toFoucault, Habermas writes that he appreciates “the earnestnesswith which he perseveres in productive contradictions” acknowl-edging that “only complex thought produces instructive contra-dictions” (1989a, p. 178).

The Centrality of Power to Human RelationsA central point in Foucault’s analysis is that power is omnipresent,etched into the minutiae of our daily lives and exercised continu-ally by those that critical theory usually describes as “the masses.”This is in marked contrast to a view which sees power as possessedchiefly by a dominant elite, exercised from above and emanatingfrom a central location that is clearly identifiable. To Foucault,“power reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches theirbodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their dis-courses, learning processes and everyday lives” (1980, p. 39). Con-sequently, his study of power has concentrated on understandingits manifestation in everyday rituals and interactions. He studiespower “at the extreme points of its exercise . . . where it installsitself and produces real effects” (p. 197). In adult education theextreme points of exercise are the configurations of specific prac-tices—dialogic circles, learning journals, self-directed learning con-tracts, and so on—claimed to be distinctive to the field.

From a Foucaultian perspective, we learn far more about powerin adult education by studying the microdynamics of particularlearning groups in particular classrooms (the gestures, body pos-tures, seating arrangements, facial tics, and phrases that learnersand teachers commonly utter) than by investigating how adult edu-cation is funded. The growth of corporate training and humancapital development may be important trends in the field, and thepassing of adult educational legislation may seem an importantpolitical event, but Foucault maintains that this is not where poweris primarily exercised. For him the only way to understand power isto investigate “how things work at the level of on-going subjuga-


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tion, at the level of those continuous and uninterrupted processeswhich subject our bodies, govern our gestures, dictate our behav-iors” (1980, p. 97).

So Foucault starts at the bottom, with the everyday thoughtsand actions of “ordinary” people. He describes his method offocusing on everyday practices and behaviors as an ascendinganalysis of power. An ascending analysis begins by studying “infin-itesimal mechanisms, which each have their own history, their owntrajectory, their own techniques and tactics” and then describeshow these are co-opted “by ever more general mechanisms and byforms of global domination” (Foucault, 1980, p. 99). This ap-proach stands in marked contrast to a top-down analysis of powerwhere a central supervisory agency is identified (for example onewith responsibility for accrediting adult education programs), andthe focus is on studying how this agency extends its control evermore widely by forcing people to behave in a certain way. Foucaultbelieved that a top-down analysis was too deterministic and gavefar too much weight to a dominant group’s ability to make theworld conform to its image.

In Foucault’s view power relations are infinitely diverse andcontextual. They originate in unpredictable ways at particulartimes and places. A dominant group does not set out to create aset of mechanisms of control designed to bolster its authority. Whatreally happens is that members of this group begin to realize thatspecific practices have arisen that could “become economicallyadvantageous and politically useful” (Foucault, 1980, p. 101) inmaintaining the dominant group’s position. Whenever a dominantgroup perceives that certain practices might prove useful to themthen “as a natural consequence, all of a sudden, they came to becolonized and maintained by global mechanisms and the entirestate system” (p. 101). So, in Foucault’s view, the establishment ofsocietal mechanisms of control is haphazard and accidental ratherthan deliberately organized. Those who desire to maintain the sys-tem as it is wait till a specific configuration of power relations andpractices emerges that can be co-opted to support the functioningof that system. This serendipitous configuration is then seizedupon and incorporated to serve ends that are often contradictoryto the configuration’s intent.

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An adult educational example of this, discussed in Usher andEdwards’ (1994) analysis of postmodern education, is the accredi-tation of adults’ prior experiential learning. Acknowledging thevalidity of adults’ prior learning experiences emerged originally asa countercultural, experimental practice. It was an innovative wayof challenging the sterility and rigidity of formal conceptions oflearning embedded in higher educational curricula. Proponentsof recognizing prior learning for adults accused colleges and uni-versities of denigrating and excluding the knowledge and experi-ence adults brought to their studies. To them it was insulting tomake adults take introductory courses in subjects where adultlearners sometimes had more experience than the instructor. Tochallenge this position, some adult educators argued that people’severyday knowledge should be taken as seriously as the knowledgethat was codified and transmitted within the academy. To this endthey advocated the establishment of systems of portfolio assessmentwhereby adult learners could have their prior learning acknowl-edged and granted college credit.

Initially, the accreditation of adults’ prior learning was regardedby many within academe as an irrelevant, soft option favored by afew wooly-minded liberals working in fringe institutions. To use aterm of Foucault’s, adults’ experiential learning represented a sub-jugated knowledge, one of “a whole set of knowledges that havebeen disqualified as inadequate to their task or insufficiently elabo-rated: naïve knowledges, located low down on the hierarchy, beneaththe required level of cognition or scientificity” (1980, p. 82). Overtime, however, those in authority have realized that the practicesassociated with experiential learning present a happy set of circum-stances ripe for co-opting in support of the dominant system.

In Foucault’s analysis this is a predictable development. Sub-jugated knowledges “are no sooner accredited and put into circu-lation, than they run the risk of re-codification, recolonization”(1980, p. 86). This has arguably been the fate of some experientiallearning initiatives placed within formal educational institutions.Initially, systems for accrediting prior learning flourish as opposi-tional practices. After a period of time, however, colleges start “toannex them, to take them back within the fold of their own dis-course” (p. 86). Usher and Edwards (1994) suggest that “experi-ential learning is fast becoming a central object in a powerful and


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oppressive discourse” (p. 206) as governments bypass professionalteachers to establish assessment and accreditation mechanisms thatvalue certain forms of experience and learning (particularly thosethat are vocationally related to information technology) over oth-ers. In their view, “the turn to experience is a means of by-passingexperienced practitioners and negating the power of their profes-sional judgment . . . thereby transforming experience into a com-modity to be exchanged for credit towards qualifications” (p. 204).

A Synaptic Economy of PowerLet us turn now to a fuller consideration of the way power is pre-sent in the smallest, apparently most inconsequential, human inter-action. As we have seen, Foucault views power as somethingembedded in the everyday lives of citizens and in the everydayactivities of adult learners and educators. He posits “a synapticregime of power, a regime of its exercise within the social body,rather than from above it” (1980, p. 39). Power flows around thebody politic and around the adult education classroom rather thanbeing located at one clearly discernible point. Hence, “power mustbe analyzed as something which circulates, or rather as somethingwhich only functions in the form of a chain” (p. 98). It is continu-ally in use, always being renewed, altered, and challenged by allthose individuals who exercise it. Foucault writes that “power isemployed and exercised through a net-like organization. And notonly do individuals circulate between its threads; they are always inthe position of simultaneously undergoing and exercising thispower . . . individuals are the vehicles of power” (p. 98).

This view of power as all-pervasive and exercised by individu-als at all levels challenges the discourse common in critical theorywhereby power is used in a repressive way to enforce ideologicalmanipulation. In the critical tradition view, those who possesspower (the dominant group, power elite, or ruling class) use thispossession to keep subjugated groups in place. But once we admitthat “power is exercised rather than possessed” (Foucault, 1977a,p. 26), then the question of how one group maintains its hege-mony over another becomes much harder to answer. Instead ofidentifying those social mechanisms that bend the masses to thewill of an elite group, we have to shift our attention to studying

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how individuals’ idiosyncratic and specific everyday actions keep asystem going in the absence of force clearly exercised from above.Rejecting the notion that power is a commodity that is possessedonly by those clearly identified as powerful also challenges the ideathat social life, or adult educational practices, can be divided intoopposing spheres of repression and freedom.

Foucault criticizes the belief that society at large, and adult edu-cational practices in particular, contain zones of freedom uncon-taminated by the presence of power. In his words, “It seems to methat power is already there, that one is never ‘outside’ it, that thereare no ‘margins’ for those who break with the system to gambolin” (1980, p. 14). The omnipresence of power means we have toaccept that all of us, at all times, are implicated in its workings. Wemust accept that “power is co-extensive with the social body; thereare no spaces of primal liberty between the meshes of its network”(p. 142). The pride that I took in creating a power-free zone in myearly days as an adult educator is, in Foucault’s eyes, naïve andmisplaced.

This is an analysis that many adult educators may reject en-tirely, arguing that in comparison with other fields of educationalpractice theirs is much freer. It is not uncommon to hear it arguedthat in adult educational settings learners have the chance to expe-rience an open, democratic process liberated from the distortionsand constraints imposed on them by the requirements of K–12education. Those adult educators with humanistic, progressive, orradical sympathies take pride in their commitment to letting adultlearners take control of their learning. They encourage adults todefine their own curriculum, run their own classes, and evaluatetheir own progress. A belief in the possibility that adults can beresponsible for their personal and political self-actualization seemsinherently liberatory.

Foucault would have us think otherwise. To him power relationsare manifest in all adult educational interactions, even those thatseem the freest and most unconstrained. As an example, think of anadult educational practice that appears to equalize power relations,if not escape from them entirely—the circle. Some three decadesago a colleague of mine jokingly asked me the question “How doyou recognize an adult educator at a party?” The response—“she’s


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the one moving the chairs into a circle”—hit home, since almost myfirst action as an adult educator was to get to my first ever class earlyand move the chairs into a circle. In so doing I felt I had demon-strated admirably my commitment to honoring learners’ voices andexperiences and to removing my own coercive power from the edu-cational setting.

The circle is so sacred and reified in adult education as to bean unchallengeable sign of practitioners’ democratic purity andlearner centeredness. However, following Foucault, it is quite pos-sible to understand that the discussion circle may be experiencedby participants as a situation in which the possibility of surveillanceis dramatically heightened. Usher and Edwards (1994) write thatwhile putting chairs in a circle “may create different discursive pos-sibilities, it nonetheless simply reconfigures the regulation of stu-dents. They may not be so directly subject to the teacher/lecturerbut they remain under the immediate scrutiny and surveillance oftheir peers . . . changing practices do not, then, do away with powerbut displace it and reconfigure it in different ways” (Usher andEdwards, 1994, p. 91). In a circle, students know that their lack ofparticipation or their poorly articulated contribution will be all themore evident to their peers.

Gore (1993) builds on Foucault’s work to argue that beneaththe circle’s democratic veneer there may exist a much more trou-bling and ambivalent reality. For learners who are confident, loqua-cious, and used to academic culture, the circle holds relatively fewterrors. It is an experience that is congenial, authentic, and liber-ating. But for students who are shy, aware of their different skincolor, physical appearance, or form of dress, unused to intellectualdiscourse, intimidated by disciplinary jargon and the culture ofacademe, or conscious of their accent or lack of vocabulary, the cir-cle can be a painful and humiliating experience.

These learners have been stripped of their right to privacy.They are denied the chance to check teachers out from a distanceby watching them closely before deciding whether or not they canbe trusted. This trust only develops over time as teachers are seento act consistently, honestly, and fairly. Yet the circle, with itsimplicit pressure to participate and perform, may preclude thetime and opportunity for this trust to develop. As such, it is a prime

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example of how apparently democratic practices can be experi-enced by their recipients as oppressive and dictatorial.

Disciplinary PowerFoucault subsumed many of his most important ideas within a sin-gle concept, that of disciplinary power. In seeking to illuminate theway power operates in complex, diverse, technologically advancedsocieties, he argued that the eighteenth and nineteenth centurieswitnessed the rise of a new economy of power—disciplinary power.This new economy ensured “the circulation of effects of powerthrough progressively finer channels, gaining access to individualsthemselves, to their bodies, their gestures and all their daily actions”(1980, p. 152). Disciplinary power was in many ways more insidious,more sinister, than the workings of sovereign power, being basedon “knowing the inside of people’s minds” (1982, p. 214).

Although most people in the twenty-first century still think ofpower in sovereign terms (that is, as located in a clearly identifiableindividual or political unit), Foucault believed that the economy ofdisciplinary power emerged two to three hundred years ago. Thiseconomy established “procedures which allowed the effects ofpower to circulate in a manner at once continuous, uninterrupted,adopted and ‘individualized’ throughout the entire social body”(1980, p. 119). Disciplinary power exhibits an “attentive malevo-lence” (1977a, p. 139) and is “a type of power which is constantlyexercised by means of surveillance” (1980, p. 104). It is seen mostexplicitly in the functioning of prisons, but its mechanisms are alsoat play in schools, factories, social service agencies, and adult edu-cation. This form of power turns lifelong learning into a lifelongnightmare of “hierarchical surveillance, continuous registration,perpetual assessment and classification” (1977a, p. 220).

Consistent with his belief that power relations are not deliber-ately and skillfully engineered by a secretive, dominant elite, Fou-cault emphasized the element of arbitrary chance that lay behindthe emergence of disciplinary power. As he sees it, “a multitude ofoften minor processes, of different origin and scattered location,[which] overlap, repeat, or imitate one another, support oneanother, distinguish themselves from one another according totheir domain of application, converge and gradually produce the


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blueprint of a general method” (1977a, p. 138). The rationale in-forming the emergence of disciplinary power was the need tobreak up groups and collectivities into separate units that could besubjected to individual surveillance. These single units could thenbe inveigled into eventually surveying themselves. Surveillancewould be more likely accepted if citizens could be persuaded thatsociety itself was under constant internal threat and needed to bedefended from all kinds of destabilizing forces (Foucault, 2003).

Disciplinary power exhibits spatial and temporal dimensions.It divides space “into as many sections as there are bodies or ele-ments to be distributed . . . to be able at each moment to supervisethe conduct of each individual, to assess it, to judge it, to calculateits qualities or merits” (2003, p. 143). Adult learners are separatedinto individual cubicles and study carrels, or behind individualcomputer terminals, working on individual projects. Examinationsare taken, essays written, and graduate theses submitted as indi-vidual acts of intellectual labor. The collective learning representedby three or four adult graduate students collaboratively writing adissertation or two or three adult education professors coauthor-ing scholarly articles is discouraged as a plagiaristic diversion of theintellectually weak.

Disciplinary power also breaks down time “into separate andadjusted threads” (2003, p. 158) by arranging learning in asequence of discrete stages. Training and practice are detachedfrom each other, the curriculum is divided into elements for whichpredetermined amounts of time are allocated, and the timetablebecomes the pivotal reference point for the organization of learn-ers’ and teachers’ activities. Although he does not cite Foucault,Myles Horton sounds distinctly Foucaultian overtones in his cri-tique of contemporary education: “You have things cut down tosmall units so you can analyze them, so you can control them, soyou can have tests” (Horton, 2003, p. 225). To Horton, “the tradi-tional way of dividing up classes—arithmetic, reading, grammar,language, geography, thirty minutes, thirty minutes, thirty minutes,etc.—that serves technological ends much better than it serves edu-cational ends” (p. 225).

A central mechanism of disciplinary power is the examination.The examination has “the triple function of showing whether thesubject has reached the level required, of guaranteeing that each

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subject undergoes the same apprenticeship and of differentiatingthe abilities of each individual” (Foucault, 1977a, p. 158). Those whogo through a series of examinations have their lives fixed andrecorded in documents that make up “a whole meticulous archiveconstituted in terms of bodies and days” (p. 189). People are sorted,classified, and differentiated by the examination, which functions as“a normalizing gaze, a surveillance that makes it possible to qualify,to classify and to punish” (p.184). When people’s achievements andaptitudes are judged by the examination, then we enter “the age ofexaminatory justice” (p. 305) in which “the judges of normality arepresent everywhere” (p. 304). In other words, one’s degree of nor-mality depends on one’s scores on a series of standardized tests.

Surveillance and the PanopticonWhy do drivers stay close to the speed limit when no highway patrolcars are to be seen? Perhaps because they assume that observing thelimit ensures a safe trip. But probably the main concern is to avoidbeing caught speeding by unseen radar, hidden speed cameras, orunmarked police cars. We know these mechanisms of surveillanceexist and that at any time they might be trained on us. As Foucaultobserves, “Surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is dis-continuous in its action” (1977a, p. 201). We dare not risk acceler-ating beyond the prescribed speed because at the back of our mindsthere is always the risk that some hidden force will register ourbreach of the law. When we monitor our own conduct out of fearof being observed by an unseen, powerful gaze, then the perfectmechanism of control—self-surveillance—is operating.

Self-surveillance is the most important component of discipli-nary power. In a society subject to disciplinary power, we disciplineourselves. There is no need for the coercive state apparatus to spendenormous amounts of time and money making sure we behave cor-rectly since we are watching ourselves to make sure we don’t stepout of line. What makes us watch ourselves so assiduously is not aninternal resolve to follow normal ways of thinking and acting,thereby avoiding a fall into disgrace. Instead, we watch ourselvesbecause we sense that our attempt to stay close to the norm is itselfbeing watched by another, all-seeing presence. We carry within usthe sense that “out there,” in some hidden, undiscoverable loca-


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tion, “they” are constantly observing us. It is hard to deviate fromthe norm if you feel your thoughts and actions are being recorded(figuratively and sometimes literally) by cameras hidden in everycorner of your life.

For Foucault, “the perfect disciplinary apparatus would make itpossible for a single gaze to see everything constantly” (Foucault,1977a, p. 173) and for those being surveyed to be aware that at anytime they may be subject to invisible scrutiny. Think of how when weride alone in car park or hotel elevators we make sure we look “nor-mal” and nonthreatening to the camera lens positioned in the topcorner. This form of surveillance is based on the “principle of com-pulsory visibility” which “assures the hold of the power that is exer-cised over them” (p. 187). In Foucault’s words, “It is the fact ofconstantly being seen, of being able always to be seen, that maintainsthe disciplined individual in all his subjection” (p. 187).

As well as being very effective in keeping people in line, self-sur-veillance is also cheap. Foucault is almost rhapsodic in his apprecia-tion of the utilitarian elegance of self-surveillance: “There is no needfor arms, physical violence, material constraints. Just a gaze. Aninspecting gaze, a gaze which each individual under its weight willend by interiorizing to the point that he is his own overseer, eachindividual thus exercising this surveillance over, and against, him-self. A superb formula: power exercised continuously and for whatturns out to be a minimal cost” (1980, p. 155).

The principle of compulsory visibility is most perfectly realizedin the panopticon. Designed by Jeremy Bentham, the panopticonis a prison system in which hundreds of prison cells are organizedin a circle around a single tower inhabited by two or three guards.Because the cells are backlit but the tower is not, the guards cansee into all the cells but the prisoners cannot see into the tower.Consequently, any single prisoner can never be sure at any partic-ular moment that he or she is not the object of surveillance. Thisis “an apparatus of total and circulating mistrust” (Foucault, 1980,p. 158) in which inmates themselves are the bearers of power. Thesystem works on the facts of the visibility of the backlit inmate andthe unverifiability of the disciplinary gaze from the darkenedtower; “the inmate must never know whether he is being lookedon at any moment; but he must be sure that he may always be so”(Foucault, 1977a, p. 201).

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In Foucault’s view, the panopticon is the organizing principleof disciplinary power in contemporary society, “a technologicalinvention in the order of power comparable with the steam enginein the order of production” (1980, p. 151). Organizations and insti-tutions throughout society induce in people “a state of consciousand permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning ofpower” (1977a, p. 201). In car parks, high streets, workplaces,shops, hotels, airports, malls, banks, even schools and colleges, wecan see cameras trained on us. We know that somewhere in a placewe can’t see a security guard has an image of us on one of a bankof screens. Of course, we can never be sure this guard has chosento look at the particular screen containing our image or even thatthe guard has not temporarily gone to the bathroom. But we cannever be absolutely sure he or she is not there. Better to be safethan sorry, then, and behave as if we were being watched.

Foucault is explicit in his belief that the panopticon pervadeseducation just as much as any other human activity. In his words,“a relation of surveillance, defined and regulated, is inscribed atthe heart of the practice of teaching, not as an additional or adja-cent part, but as a mechanism that is inherent to it and whichincreases its efficiency” (1977a, p. 176). Examinations, timetables,student of the month awards, gold stars, end-of-term reports, stu-dent workbooks, and learning portfolios all combine to makelearners aware that their presence within the system is being mon-itored constantly. An awareness of this fact by the “lads” featuredin Willis’ study (1981) of English secondary education (describedin Chapter Three) was so strong that they spent a good part oftheir lives scheming to avoid it. By finding places where they wereconfident of being unobserved and by creating their own timeta-bles of activity which had little to do with the school’s functioning,they were able to reduce the effects of disciplinary time and space.

In a fascinating application of Foucault’s ideas to the practice ofadult education, Boshier and Wilson (1998) argue that Web-basedcourses (often thought to be learner centered, decentralized, andflexible) can function in a panoptic fashion. Participation in chatroom discussion is mandated and observed by the webmaster whocreates an archival paper trail documenting the learner’s activities.Boshier and Wilson quote one site where irony is used to let studentsknow they are being observed: “Our club-wielding Pinkerton agents,


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who keep us informed about the daily activities of suspicious History102 students, inform us that quite a few rebels decided to postponeviewing Lecture 21 for a few days” (Boshier and Wilson, 1998, p. 46).Students know that a meticulous and comprehensive record of theWeb sites they access (including even e-mail messages they send thendelete) can be recreated at any time in the future. So an educationalprocess often touted as freeing adult learners from the need to at-tend courses at particular physical locations and pre-set times andpraised as allowing them to set their own pace for learning can eas-ily replicate some of the surveillance mechanisms of the panopticon.

Power, Knowledge, and TruthOne of the reasons Foucault’s work is so interesting to educatorsis that it constantly illuminates the relationship between power andknowledge. Whoever is in a position of power is able to createknowledge supporting that power relationship. Whatever a societyaccepts as knowledge or truth inevitably ends up strengthening thepower of some and limiting the power of others. Foucault repeat-edly states that “the exercise of power perpetually creates knowl-edge and conversely knowledge constantly induces effects of power. . . it is not possible for power to be exercised without knowledge, itis impossible for knowledge not to engender power” (1980, p. 52).If this is so, then one of the social institutions identified as havingthe prime function of creating knowledge and truth—education(including adult education)—inevitably comes under scrutiny. Afterall, it is in educational institutions that people learn standards fordetermining truth and are taught whatever comprises the officialknowledge (Apple, 2000) of that society.

According to Foucault knowledge is socially produced by anumber of connected mechanisms. He writes that there is “an ad-ministration of knowledge, a politics of knowledge, relations ofpower which pass via knowledge” (1980, p. 69) all of which com-bine to label some knowledge as legitimate, some as unreliable.These mechanisms determine how knowledge is accumulated byprescribing correct procedures for observing, researching, andrecording data and for disseminating the results of investigations.Such mechanisms of knowledge production are really controldevices, and those with the greatest command of them are able to

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create dominant discourses and regimes of truth (two terms verymuch associated with Foucault).

A dominant discourse comprises a particular language and adistinctive worldview in which some things are regarded as inher-ently more important or true than others. A discourse is partly aset of concepts that are held in common by those participating inthat discourse community. It includes rules for judging what aregood or bad, acceptable or inappropriate contributions and pro-cedures that are applied to determine who may be allowed to jointhe discourse community. Dominant discourses inevitably reflectand support existing power structures and are vital to them.According to Foucault, “Relations of power cannot themselves beestablished, consolidated nor implemented without the produc-tion, accumulation, circulation and functioning of a discourse.There can be no possible exercise of power without a certain econ-omy of discourse” (1980, p. 93).

It is rare, however, for there to be only one all-powerful dis-course in a community. Dominant and peripheral discourses aresometimes at odds with each other, and subjugated or minority dis-courses can occasionally hold sway in particular social enclaves. Forexample, in the field of contemporary adult education there are anumber of dominant discourses. Those of human capital develop-ment, self-direction, experiential learning, and liberal humanismare perhaps the most prominent. Perusing the program brochurefor the annual American Association of Adult and Continuing Edu-cation (AAACE) convention is instructive in the way the associa-tion gives prominence to these. However, attend the annual AdultEducation Research Conference (AERC), and the dominant dis-courses are those of critical theory and postmodernism. In fact,those participating in the discourses honored at AAACE sometimessay they feel regarded as pariahs or unsophisticates when partici-pating in AERC discourses.

When particular discourses coincide and overlap, they comprisewhat Foucault calls a regime of truth. In a frequently quoted pas-sage, Foucault maintains that: “each society has its regime of truth,its ‘general politics’ of truth; that is, the types of discourse which itaccepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instanceswhich enable one to distinguish true and false statements, themeans by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures


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accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those whoare charged with saying what counts as true” (1980, p. 133).

Of course, when Foucault uses the term truth it is not to describeideas or knowledge that exhibit some inherent universal accuracyor undeniable empirical correctness. Truth is a term that describesthe system that decides that certain forms of discourse should beallowed. Hence, truth is “a system of ordered procedures for the pro-duction, regulation, distribution, circulation and operation of state-ments” (1980, p. 133).

Foucault’s writings on the connections between truth, discourse,and power move us right away from thinking of knowledge as some-thing that is pursued and produced for its own sake by energeticindividuals enthusiastically dedicated to the wider edification ofhumankind. Instead, knowledge becomes seen as a social product.We start to wonder how it happens that particular writings, ideas, andpeople emerge as important in a particular field (such as adult edu-cation). Foucault prompts us to ask why certain adult educationalbooks get published, why certain questions seem to come naturallyto the forefront in professional conversations, how contributors tohandbooks of adult education are chosen, why certain adult educa-tional journals become more venerated than others, and how it is thatcertain concepts and theories come to frame the research activitiesof others in a field. He encourages us to link the emergence of newresearch agendas or theoretical frameworks in the field to the waythese support, or at least do not challenge, the politics of truth thatexist within the social or academic community of adult education.

Power, Resistance, and the Role of Adult EducatorsUp to now the regulatory dimensions of power in Foucault’s workhave been stressed. One danger in doing this is to slip into think-ing of power as wholly repressive or constraining. Foucault is con-stantly on the alert for this misconception since, in his view, powerdoes not just prevent things happening, it also “produces effects atthe level of desire” (1980, p. 59). He states his argument as follows:“If power were anything but repressive, if it never did anything butto say no, do you really think one would be brought to obey it? What makes power hold good, what makes it accepted, is sim-ply the fact that . . . it traverses and produces things, it induces

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pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse” (p. 119). Powermust therefore be considered “as a productive network which runsthrough the whole social body, much more than as a negativeinstance whose function is repression” (p. 119).

If exercising power is pleasurable, then this must apply to theexercise of disciplinary as well as sovereign power. When peopletake pleasure in disciplining themselves (for example when alearner completes a learning contract early and celebrates thisspeedy adherence to the specific requirements of the contract), weare very close to witnessing hegemony. Gramsci’s idea of hegemonyas the learner’s willing embrace of ideas, values, and practices thatactually work against her freedom is very close to Foucault’s idea ofthe pleasurable exercise of disciplinary power. In both hegemonyand disciplinary power, the consent of people to these processes isparamount. They take pride in the efficiency with which they learnappropriate boundaries, avoid “inappropriate” critique, and keepthemselves in line. Both constructs emphasize learners’ collusionin their own control and their feelings of satisfaction and pleasureat successfully ensuring their complete incarceration.

Another desire that power produces is a desire to resist manip-ulation and fight oppression. One of the most common reactionsto reading Foucault on the way possibilities for surveillance arewoven into all aspects of life is to feel defeated by the omnipres-ence of power. It is easy to despair of ever unraveling the interwo-ven and shifting configurations of power and knowledge. Thisunrelieved pessimism is unwarranted in the light of two aspects ofFoucault’s work. First, there are elements in his analysis that stressthe empirical inevitability of resistance. Indeed, it is his positionthat resistance is a necessary correlate of power so that power canonly exist if the possibility of resistance exists contemporaneously.He writes, “In the relations of power, there is of necessity the pos-sibility of resistance, for if there were no possibility of resistance—of violent resistance, of escape, of ruse, of strategies that reversethe situation—there would be no relations of power” (Foucault,1987, p. 12). Although dominant discourses and regimes of truthinsert themselves into the most detailed elements of our dailythoughts and behaviors, he also believes these can be counteredat these points of insertion. Second, Foucault’s own life illustratedhow citizens could intervene as activists to effect change with


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regard to specific causes. Let me examine these two aspects, deal-ing first with the possibility of resistance.

According to Foucault, resistance is so central to power rela-tions that it constitutes a plausible starting point for the analysis ofpower: “In order to understand what power relations are about,perhaps we should investigate the forms of resistance and attemptsmade to disassociate these relations” (1982, p. 211). Power alwaysimplies the possibility of resistance. Hence, “at the heart of powerrelations and as a permanent condition of their existence there isan insubordination and a certain essential obstinacy on the part ofthe principles of freedom” (p. 225). Foucault argued it was mis-taken to think that the omnipresence of power meant that peoplewere pawns in some larger game of chess devised by the dominantgroup. In his view, “to say that one can never be ‘outside’ powerdoes not mean that one is trapped and condemned to defeat nomatter what” (1980, p. 142). Power and resistance are contempo-raneous, one always exists as the flip side of the other: “There areno relations of power without resistances; the latter are all themore real and effective because they are formed right at the pointwhere relations are exercised” (p. 142). In one of his interviews,he contends that “all my analyses . . . . Show the arbitrariness ofinstitutions and show which space of freedom we can still enjoy andhow many changes can still be made” (1988b, p. 11).

So even as he illustrates dramatically the all-pervasive nature ofpower and dominant discourses, Foucault holds out the promiseof resistance. If power relations are ubiquitous, so is freedom: “Ifthere are relations of power throughout every social field it is be-cause there is freedom everywhere” (1987, p. 12). Clearly, then, inFoucault’s view resistance to the exercise of power is a predictablecertainty. In his words, “there is no relationship of power withoutthe means of escape or possible flight [because] every power rela-tionship implies . . . a strategy of struggle” (1982, p. 225). More-over, the switch from monolithic sovereign power to splintereddisciplinary power sometimes makes resistance seem more feasi-ble to activists who can work at the local level on specific projects.Resistance “exists all the more by being in the same place as power;hence, like power, resistance is multiple and can be integrated inglobal strategies” (p. 225). The fact that overthrowing the state, re-versing the history of patriarchy, or ending racism are not the only

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options for those resisting power opens up the possibility of smallerscale acts of opposition.

A good example of this is Angela Davis’ analysis, based mostlyon her own experience of incarceration, of the ways in which pris-ons (set up as instruments of social control) produce their ownpoints of resistance. Because many prison guards come from thesame social group as prisoners, they assist in smuggling in messagesand contraband articles from outside and allow prohibited con-versation between prisoners. If convicts realize the arbitrary natureof their incarceration, they are sometimes transformed into mili-tant adult educators engaged in “patient educational efforts in therealm of exposing the specific oppressive structures of the penalsystem in their relation to the larger oppression of the social sys-tem” (Davis, 1971a, p. 26).

It is also the case that the effects of power relations are oftenunpredictable and contradictory, unintentionally generating possi-bilities for resistance. Foucault maintained that wherever dominantdiscourses and regimes of truth exist “there are always also move-ments in the opposite direction, whereby strategies which coordi-nate relations of power produce new effects and advance intohitherto unaffected domains” (1980, p. 200). As an example of thisconsider how the World Wide Web has allowed oppositional groupsto organize effectively or how hackers have been able to wreakhavoc in the world of international business by their interventions.

So the advent of disciplinary power does not snuff out opposi-tion or smooth over conflict. On the contrary, its workings allowfor “innumerable points of confrontation, focuses of instability,each of which has its own risks of conflict, of struggles and of an atleast temporary inversion of power relations” (Foucault, 1977a,p. 26). Just as disciplinary power exerts pressure on people, so“they themselves, in their struggle against it, resist the grip it hason them” (p. 26). This form of control does not produce a societyhermetically sealed against incursions. There are always hairlinecracks in the foundation stones of social order. It is to the widen-ing of these cracks (particularly where penal reform was con-cerned) that Foucault devoted much of his energy.

As biographies such as Macey’s (1993), Miller’s (1993), and Eri-bon’s (1991) demonstrate, Foucault was constantly involved incampaigns directed toward exposing the mechanisms of control


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that lay behind a range of human service operations, particularlythose contained within the penal system. His life exemplified hisbelief that intellectuals are not passive, detached observers and re-corders of culture and society. What observation they do conductshould be undertaken, in Foucault’s view, to illuminate for othersthe specific mechanisms and strategies that those in power use tomaintain existing systems. Specifically, intellectuals are to provideinstruments of analysis that would help others locate lines ofstrength and weakness in power configurations. The role of theoryis “to analyze the specificity of mechanisms of power, to locate theconnections and extensions, to build little by little a strategicknowledge” (Foucault, 1980, p. 145). Building on his contentionthat politics is war conducted by other means (a deliberate inver-sion of Clauzewitz’s dictum that war is politics conducted by othermeans), Foucault hoped that intellectuals would produce “a topo-graphical and geographical survey of the battlefield” (p. 62) com-prising power relations. In this way Foucault echoes Gramsci onthe practical uses of theory in the struggle against power: “In thissense theory does not express, translate, or serve to apply practice:it is practice” (1996, p. 75).

In describing intellectual activity, Foucault comes close to in-voking Gramsci’s notion of organic intellectuals as educators, per-suaders, and activists working within specific social movements ofwhich they are members. Foucault declared that “a new mode of the‘connection between theory and practice’ has been established. In-tellectuals have got used to working . . . within specific sectors, atthe precise points where their own conditions of life or work situ-ate them” (1980, p. 126). He reconceptualizes theorizing as a localand regional “struggle against power, a struggle aimed at revealingand undermining power where it is invisible and insidious” (1977b,p. 208). Any analysis of power that theorists undertake should beunderstood as an act of solidarity with those who struggle againstit, a contribution to some kind of specific social, cultural, or politi-cal intervention. Drawing a topographical map of power’s opera-tion is “an activity conducted alongside those who struggle forpower, and not their illumination from a safe distance” (p. 208).The purpose of illuminating exactly how power works in obscureand hidden ways to uphold the status quo is “to sap power, to takepower” (p. 208).

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So, instead of working on behalf of massive constructs such ashumanity, the working class, women, the oppressed, or a broadsocial movement, educators could fruitfully direct their energiestoward specific projects. Educational reforms, teaching practices,housing policies, psychiatric protocols, prison organizations all offeropportunities for intellectuals to intervene in ways that contravenedominant power. In Foucault’s case this involved him working forpenal reform through the Prison Information Group, joining theJaubert commission to investigate the arrest and beating of thescience journalist, Alain Jaubert, and being arrested himself atmany demonstrations supporting prison hunger strikers, NorthAfrican immigrants, and Klaus Croissant (a German lawyer whodefended the Baader-Meinhof terrorist gang). He helped establishthe socialist newspaper Liberation and refused to meet then Presi-dent of France Valéry Giscard d’Estaing if he (Foucault) was notallowed to raise the case of Christian Ranucci who had been guil-lotined for murder. He also worked on causes outside France bypublicizing the struggles of Soviet dissidents, supporting the “Boatfor Vietnam” committee to provide relief for Vietnamese boat peo-ple, and joining a convoy to take supplies to Warsaw during thestruggle of the Solidarity movement to challenge the legitimacy ofthe Soviet-installed Polish regime. Foucault lived his belief that“theory does not express, translate, or serve to apply practice: it ispractice” (1982, p. 208).

Foucault and Adult Learning PracticesWhat can we draw from Foucault’s work in building a critical the-ory of adult learning? Perhaps the overriding insight is the need tostudy how adults learn to recognize that they are themselves agentsof power, perpetually channeling disciplinary power, but also pos-sessing the capacity to subvert dominant power relations. Manyadults (including many adult educators) either maintain that theyhave no power over others or that they can choose when and whennot to exercise it. Foucault views such confidence with amusement.He sketches out a theory of power as a circular flow that draws allinto its currents. Choosing whether or not to exercise power is, inhis eyes, an illusion. In reality we are fated to exercise power. If weaccept the view that exercising power is unavoidable, then a critical


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theory of adult learning would study how it is that adults becomeaware of that fact and what happens to them when they do. Morespecifically, such a theory would have as a prime purpose the criticalanalysis of adult educational practices that purport either to bepower-free or that attempt to democratize power.

Using Foucault’s technique of ascending analysis, it is reveal-ing to examine common adult educational practices that are cele-brated for their intent to involve all participants equally. We do notneed Foucault to help us recognize the exercise of sovereign powerin adult education. This is seen in the lecturer who treats a groupof adults as if they were ten year olds, allowing few questions andno unauthorized interruptions; the instructor who tells adults stu-dents they will drop a whole letter grade each time they are late forclass; the teacher who tells an adult student (herself a mother) thatbecause she missed a class she must bring a note from her agingfather excusing her absence. This kind of sovereign power is eas-ily detected and usually discredited by those within the field whosee themselves as “true” adult educators dedicated to empoweringlearners in a respectful way. What Foucault helps us recognize isthat another more subtle form of power—disciplinary power—isoften present in practices that are usually thought of as democraticand participatory.

The circle and the accreditation of prior learning are twoexamples of student-centered adult education that have alreadybeen mentioned as sometimes embodying disciplinary power.Other prime candidates for the label of power-free practices mightbe the use of learning journals (introduced to honor adults’ expe-riences and help them develop their own voices), the use of learn-ing contracts (designed to cede to adults the power to choose,design, and evaluate their learning), and teaching through dis-cussion (intended to avoid the tendency of adult educators tomove to center stage as didactic transmitters of content in the class-room). Each of these practices appears to avoid the reproductionof dominant power and to constitute the “temporary inversion ofpower relations” (1977a, p. 26) Foucault predicts. Yet, even as thesepractices are celebrated for their emancipatory intent and spirit ofself-actualization, we can apply Foucault’s ideas to generate a verydifferent perspective on them.

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Individualizing instruction via learning journals and learningcontracts can be interpreted as an instance of disciplinary powerthat helps the system “be able at each moment to supervise theconduct of each individual, to assess it, to judge it, to calculate itsqualities and merits” (Foucault, 1977a, p. 143). Through learningcontracts adult learners become their own overseers. They set cri-teria for judging the worth of any work they produce, and they alsoset a timetable for the achievement of their contract’s specifiedobjectives. Good adult students devote themselves to producingproper examples of the specified work on time and hold them-selves accountable to meet the conditions of the contract to thebest of their abilities. To use a term introduced earlier in the book,the contract becomes reified and assumes an identity and presenceseparate from the intents that framed it. As a controlling influencehovering over learners, it directs many of their actions.

Learning journals also lend themselves to becoming instrumentsof surveillance. After all, they could arguably be said to be based on“knowing the inside of people’s minds” (Foucault, 1982, p. 214)since their explicit intent is to externalize people’s innermost reflec-tions. A norm of “transformativity” often hovers in the backgroundto direct the way such journals are written. Learners who sense thattheir teacher is a strong advocate of experiential methods may pickup the implicit message that good journals reveal dramatic, privateepisodes that lead to transformative insights. Adults who don’t haveanything painful, traumatic, or exciting to confess can easily feel thattheir journal is not quite what the teacher ordered, that it strays toofar from this transformative norm. Not being able to produce reve-lations of sufficient intensity, they may decide to invent some. Or,they may start to paint a quite ordinary experience with a sheen oftransformative significance. A lack of dramatic experiences orinsights to relate may be perceived by students as a sign of failure—an indication that their lives are somehow incomplete and lived ata level that is insufficiently self-aware or exciting. The idea of trans-formativity thus constitutes a hidden but powerful norm for journalwriting that is enforced by the “judges of normality” (Foucault,1977a, p. 304); that is, by the teachers who read and grade thesejournals.

As mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, discussion as away of learning is often experienced by learners as a sort of per-


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formance theater, a situation in which their acting is also watchedby the judges of normality. These judges (the discussion leaders)monitor the extent to which adults are participating in the con-versation in a suitable manner. Foucault argues that “the universalreign of the normative” ) means that each person “subjects to it hisbody, his gestures, his behavior, his aptitudes, his achievements”(1977a, p. 304).

Many adult discussion groups are certainly influenced by anunexpressed but influential norm of what constitutes good discus-sion. This norm holds that in the best discussions everyone speaksintelligently and articulately for roughly equal amounts of time, andall conversation is focused on the topic at hand. Silence is rare. Con-versation focuses only on relevant issues with a suitably sophisticatedlevel of discourse. Talk flows scintillatingly and seamlessly from topicto topic. Everyone listens attentively and respectfully to everyoneelse’s contributions. People make their comments in a way that isinformed, thoughtful, insightful, and unfailingly courteous. TheAlgonquin round table or a Bloomsbury dinner party are the exem-plars the norm implies and the ones toward which learners andleaders direct their discussion performances.

Discussion leaders as judges of normality overtly reinforce thepower of this norm by establishing criteria for participation thatoperationalize the norm’s rules of conduct. Assigning part of agrade for “participation,” without defining what participationmeans, activates the norm’s influence over participants. Learnersimmediately interpret participation as doing their best to exem-plify this norm. They carefully rehearse stunningly insightful con-tributions that will make them sound like Cornel West or GertrudeStein.

The norm is covertly reinforced by discussion teachers de-ploying a range of subtle, nonverbal behaviors that signify approvalor disapproval of participants’ efforts to exemplify the norm.Through nods, frowns, eye contact (or the lack of it), sighs of frus-tration or pity, grunts of agreement, disbelieving intakes of breathat the obvious stupidity or astounding profundity of a particularcomment, and a wide range of other gestures, discussion leaderscommunicate to the group when they are close to or moving awayfrom the norm. Unless discussion leaders redefine criteria for dis-

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cussion participation to challenge this norm, adult learners willwork assiduously to gear their behavior toward its realization.

This chapter has argued that Foucault’s analysis of power issquarely in the critical tradition despite the belief of some that Fou-cault is really a postmodernist who challenges the Enlightenmentfoundations of criticality. Reading Foucault helps us understand howapparently liberatory practices can actually work subtly to perpetu-ate existing power relations. He cautions adult educators who pridethemselves on their participatory approaches that they can inadver-tently reinforce the discriminatory practices they seek to challenge.Foucault undermines adult educators’ confidence that the world canbe divided into good guys (democratic adult educators who subvertdominant power through experiential, dialogic practices) and badguys (behaviorally inclined trainers who reproduce dominant ide-ology and practices by forcing corporate agendas on adult learners).If the Gramscian approach to adult education explored in the pre-vious chapter helps us name the enemy, a Foucaultian approachmakes us aware that the enemy is sometimes ourselves.


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Chapter Six

Overcoming Alienation

Many people, quite understandably, approach critical theory withsome trepidation. Part of this wariness is due to the content of thetheory itself, part of it due to the manner of its expression. Workyour way past the Marxophobia mentioned in Chapter One, andyou still have to contend with a German philosophical traditiongrounded in the complexities of Hegel. Accessible is about the lastword that springs to mind when critical theory is mentioned. Theseven habits of highly effective theorists it’s not.

As with most bodies of theory, however, an occasional writerstands out as an accessible public intellectual, one who can be readprofitably (a term with capitalist overtones that Fromm wouldstrongly object to) by a broader audience. In critical theory ErichFromm is such a writer. His comment in the Foreword to The Artof Loving (1956b) that in order “to avoid unnecessary complica-tions I have tried to deal with the problem in a language which isnon technical as far as this is possible” (p. vii) could apply to mostof his work. He strove constantly for an accessibility and consistencyof tone, interpreting ideas drawn from the critical tradition interms comprehensible to the average reader. As a consequence hiswork has been read by millions who would be very suspicious ofopening works such as Selections from the Prison Notebooks, The Ger-man Ideology, or Lenin and Philosophy.

Perhaps as a consequence of his accessibility, Fromm has notenjoyed the same critical acclaim as his contemporaries, sometimesbeing regarded as “Frankfurt Lite.” In view of postmodernism’sdeconstruction of the idea of the unitary, essential self, Fromm’sbelief in the possibility of each individual possessing a unique, coreessence can appear comic. Fromm confidently proposed “the exis-tence of a self, of a core in our personality which is unchangeable

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and which persists throughout life in spite of varying circum-stances, and regardless of certain changes in opinions and feelings”(1956b, p. 123). This core was “the reality behind the word ‘I’” andthe reality “on which our conviction of our own identity is based”(p. 123). Such declarations are laughable to those of a postmod-ern bent given their notion of identity as socially labile. As Bagnall(1999) records, a tenet of postmodernism is that identity is so mal-leable it can be constituted and reconstituted at will. The same per-son can think and behave in entirely contradictory ways dependingon the situation. Fromm’s confidence concerning the stability of acore identity looks hopelessly naïve to contemporary postmodernsensibilities.

Fromm has probably also been neglected because of his datedsexist language. He talks constantly of the needs, desires, hopes,and potential of “man,” refers to the individual person or workeras “he” and “his,” and instead of people talks of “men.” Even al-lowing for the literary conventions of the mid-twentieth century,the omission of any mention of women is striking. More than most in the tradition, Fromm uses “man” to refer to all humanity, ar-guing that such a convention “has a long tradition in humanistthinking” (1976, p. 10). In his defense, it is important to rememberthat he was not writing in his first language and that “in Germanone uses the word Mensch to refer to the non-sex differentiatedbeing” (p. 10).

Fromm’s view of gender and sexuality is also very much of histime and may go some way to explaining his relative absence fromcriticalist adult education texts. He sees the integrated, healthy per-sonality as a fusion of masculine and feminine features. The mas-culine character exhibits “qualities of penetration, guidance,activity, discipline and adventurousness” while the feminine char-acter has “qualities of productive receptiveness, protection, real-ism, endurance, motherliness” (1956b, p. 36). Even for his caveatthat “in each individual both characteristics are blended” (p. 37),it is hard to imagine many contemporary critical theorists takingsuch an essentialist perspective on gender. Fromm did modify thisstance somewhat toward the end of his life arguing in To Have orTo Be (1976) that a healthy personality is “a synthesis in which bothsides of the polarity lose their mutual antagonism and, instead,color each other” (p. 144). However, given the emergence in the


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last three decades of queer theory, gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans-gender studies, it is a shock to encounter the comment that in con-trast to the ideal, androgynous union of feminine and masculinequalities “homosexual deviation is a failure to attain this polarizedunion, and thus the homosexual suffers from the pain of neverresolved separateness” (p. 34).

Toward the end of his life, Fromm did have his consciousnessraised regarding his sexist language. In the preface to To Have or ToBe (1976), he thanks a female colleague “for convincing me that theuse of language in this respect is far more important than I used tothink” and states his belief that in that book “I have avoided all‘male-oriented’ language” (p. 10). He also pays more explicit atten-tion to patriarchy, declaring that “women must be liberated frompatriarchal domination” (p. 186), though that phrasing itself couldbe taken as a subtle example of patriarchy with its implication thatit is men’s responsibility to bring about this liberation. The chiefsignificance of the women’s liberation movement, in his view, wasits “threat to the principle of power on which contemporary soci-ety (capitalist and communist alike) lives” (p. 188).

If one can get past these drawbacks, Fromm’s essential radical-ism needs to be recognized. Make no bones about it, his analysisof contemporary society and his belief that adult education is cru-cial to a sane society are grounded explicitly in a Marxist analysisof capitalism, particularly the alienated nature of work and learn-ing. In Beyond the Chains of Illusion (1962), Fromm is unequivocalin his admiring description of The Communist Manifesto as “a bril-liant and lucid analysis of history” (p. 15), and throughout the restof his work he frequently praises and calls attention to what he calls“the real Marx, the radical humanist” not “the vulgar forgery pre-sented by Soviet communism” (1976, p. 25). Certainly his own sum-mation of the central concerns of his life show their derivationfrom Marxist analysis. Hence, in the Preface to The Revolution ofHope (1968), he states “this book, like all my previous work, at-tempts to distinguish between individual and social reality and theideologies that misuse and ‘co-opt’ valuable ideas for the purposeof supporting the status quo” (p. vii).

For Fromm, learning to penetrate ideological obfuscation, andthereby overcome the alienation this obfuscation induced, was thelearning task of adulthood. Working firmly within the “ideology as

OVERCOMING ALIENATION 151

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false consciousness” perspective, Fromm observed that through “acomplicated process of indoctrination, rewards, punishments, andfitting ideology . . . most people believe they are following theirown will and are unaware that their will itself is conditioned andmanipulated” (1976, p. 83). Adult education as a force for resis-tance can make people aware of ideological manipulation and ed-ucate them for participatory democracy. In such a democracy,people “regain control over the social and economic system” tomake “optimal human development and not maximal productionthe criterion for all planning” (1968, p. 101). The point of demo-cratic life in Fromm’s view is to reorganize the workplace to makeit a site for the exercise of human creativity.

Of all the theorists associated with the Frankfurt School, Frommis probably the one who in his time was read by the largest numberof readers, including many non-Marxists well outside the criticaltradition. Why should this be the case? Perhaps one reason is thathe draped his writing in the cloak of humanism as well as Marxism,frequently citing a commitment to radical humanism. To contem-porary adult educators, humanism is a benign, friendly word asso-ciated with notions of self-actualization or the fully functioning adultand drawing on Rogers, Maslow, and Allport. A humanistic per-spective on adult education is usually interpreted as one that empha-sizes respect for each adult learner’s individuality and that seeks tohelp her realize her potential to the fullest extent possible. There isless attention to the political underpinnings of adult educationpractice and to the way political economy makes self-actualization aluxury for a certain social class. In contrast to this, Fromm’s norma-tive humanism is a militant, Marxist humanism, one that contendsthat each human’s realization of potential entails the abolition ofcapitalist alienation and the creation of democratic socialism. Butbecause they are called humanist, Fromm’s ideas beckon enticinglyto adult educators who would not dream of touching anythingremotely considered Marxist.

Fromm viewed himself as a social psychologist and his work em-phasizes the psychology of the individual as much as social critique.But his analysis always insists that both psychological and socio-logical understandings need to coexist if contemporary life is to befully understood. His writings on psychology, particularly in suchbooks as The Art of Loving (1956b), exhibit a tone and terminology


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that make them congenial reading for those adult educators influ-enced by American, rather than European, intellectual traditions.Consider the Whitmanesque and Emersonian echoes of the fol-lowing meditation on the aim of life which appeared in The SaneSociety: “The aim of life is to live it intensely, to be fully born, to befully awake. To emerge from the ideas of infantile grandiosity intothe conviction of one’s real though limited strength; to be able toaccept the paradox that every one of us is the most important thingin the universe—and at the same time not more important than afly or a blade of grass” (1956a, p. 204). Adult educators schooled indevelopmental and humanistic psychology and familiar with Perry,Kohlberg, Rogers, and Knowles will accept quite happily Fromm’scontention that mentally healthy people are those who are able “totolerate uncertainty about the most important questions with whichlife confronts us—and yet to have faith in our thought and feeling,in as much as they are truly ours” (p. 204).

In this chapter I want to argue that this congeniality of tonemakes Fromm’s work the statement of critical theory that is mostaccessible to a North American audience used to thinking in termsof the psychology of the individual adult learner. That Fromm canwrite in terms acceptable to a chiefly nonpolitical audience and thathe can do this while unapologetically showing how this work isgrounded in a Marxist influenced critique of capitalism makes himvery important to the critical theory tradition in North Americanadult education. This is particularly so given that Fromm clearly sawa direct link between a healthy society free from capitalist alienationand a strong system of adult education.

In his major book interpreting Marxism for a popular audience,The Sane Society (1956a), he wrote that “a sane society must providepossibilities for adult education, much as it provides today for theschooling of children” (p. 346) and optimistically recorded that“adult education is spreading” (p. 207). If adults were to understandand confront their alienation, they needed to understand how his-tory and psychology intersected to construct a social characterprone to follow fascist or totalitarian leaders or to be subject to theinfluence of automaton conformity. The difficulties entailed by sucha learning project could not be overcome by children or adoles-cents. In Fromm’s opinion, “to really understand the problems inthese fields, a person must have had a great deal more experience


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in living than he has had at college age. For many people the ageof 30 or 40 is much more appropriate for learning” (p. 346).

Fromm’s Debt to MarxThe chief outlines of Fromm’s critique of contemporary society,and, by implication, of adult education, are drawn directly fromMarxist thought, particularly Marx’s outline of the way in whichwork in capitalist society has become objectified; that is, experi-enced by workers as separated from their creativity and identity. In1961 Fromm published Marx’s Concept of Man, a translation ofMarx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, with an interpretivecommentary added by Fromm himself. The first manuscript trans-lated is “Alienated Labor,” Marx’s classic statement on the way inwhich capitalist economics means that “the individual worker sinksto the level of a commodity, and to a most miserable commodity”(Marx, 1961, p. 93). In this essay Marx describes the developmentof monopoly capitalism and the decline of the individual entre-preneur. In capitalist economies, “the necessary result of compe-tition is the accumulation of capital in a few hands” (p. 93), adevelopment Marx viewed as “a restoration of monopoly in a moreterrible form” (p. 93).

The injuries of monopoly capitalism surface repeatedly inFromm’s work. Even in widely popular books written for a massaudience such as The Art of Loving (1956b), he writes that undermodern capitalism “we witness an ever-increasing process of cen-tralization and concentration of capital” in which “the ownershipof capital invested in these enterprises is more and more separatedfrom the function of managing them” (p. 84). When the ownersof capital can command labor to produce goods that increase thereturn on the owner’s investment, then a hierarchy emerges inwhich “amassed things, that which is dead, are of superior value tolabor, to human powers, to that which is alive” (p. 84). Work undersuch a system is physically exhausting, mentally debasing, and crea-tively moribund. Most damningly, it is also spiritually demeaning.Since people work for someone else, their labor becomes convertedinto someone else’s property. The artifacts produced by people’slabor have nothing of their own creativity or identity containedwithin them. In Marx’s words, “The object produced by labor, its


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product, now stands opposed to it as an alien being, as a power inde-pendent of the producer. The product of labor is labor which hasbeen embodied in an object and turned into a physical thing; thisproduct is an objectification of labor. The performance of work is atthe same time its objectification” (Marx, 1961, p. 95).

Using Fromm’s analysis as a starting point, it is quite possible tointerpret adult learning processes through the lens of objectifica-tion. In mandatory continuing education, compulsory training, andthe required participation of employees in human resource devel-opment programs, it is easy to see how learning undertaken to sat-isfy external authorities ceases to become the adult learner’sintellectual project. Very frequently, the products and measures oflearning—essays, test scores, papers, exams—take on physical formsand stand apart from the learner. The exam does not measure theadult’s engagement in creative work as a means of broadening orconfirming her identity. Instead, it exerts a coercive pressure requir-ing her to improve her performance according to criteria she hadno hand in proposing and has little chance of affecting. Myles Hor-ton, the renowned adult educational activist, expressed his disdainfor the demeaning way in which contemporary education “has gotto be something that can be tested or controlled” resulting in thelearner “being handled like a machine with predictable results”(Horton, 2003, p. 225).

When labor is objectified, something peculiar happens to theworker’s emotions. Workers feel more and more disconnectedfrom their work which itself starts to be thought of as somethingseparate from themselves, something outside their sphere of influ-ence. In a famous quote from the “Alienated Labor” manuscript,Marx writes that “the more the worker expends himself in work,the more powerful becomes the world of objects which he createsin face of himself, the poorer he becomes in his inner life, and theless he belongs to himself” (Marx, 1961, p. 96). In devoting them-selves to the production of objects, workers somehow find thattheir own identity has diminished as the power of the objects theyproduce has increased. Like the demented ventriloquist who seeshis doll gain life and start to control him, so “the worker puts hislife into the object, and his life then belongs no longer to himselfbut to the object [which] sets itself against him as an alien and hos-tile force” (p. 96). The tragedy of contemporary life is not just that


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workers are exploited and dominated by the owners of productionbut also that they are overwhelmed by the world of objects itselfwhich now becomes experienced “as an alien and hostile world”(p. 99).

It is because of their suspicion of how learning can becomeobjectified and experienced by adults as irrelevant to their realneeds and inner yearnings that so many adult educators havestressed and continue to insist on the voluntary underpinnings ofgenuine adult education. From Lindeman ([1926] 1961) to Hor-ton (1990), a school of adult education has contended that adulteducation only happens when adults opt voluntarily for a programof learning they have helped design. This tradition regards manda-tory adult education as an oxymoron. It focuses instead on howadult education can help learners develop skills and knowledgethat will help them understand and change the communities inwhich they live. This learning happens through a collaborativeanalysis of adults’ experiences during which roles of teacher andlearner interchange among participants. Adult educators whoattempt to follow this tradition do their best to replicate the fea-tures of participatory democracy, with all participants activelyinvolved in deciding aspects of what and how to learn.

The Marxist concepts of objectification, commodification, andalienation surface again and again in Fromm’s work, constantlyunderpinning his own normative humanism. In commenting onMarx, Fromm argued that Marxism was less a political creed, more“a spiritual existentialism in secular language” (1961, p. 5). ToFromm, “Marx’s aim was that of the spiritual emancipation of man,of his liberation from the chains of economic determinism, of resti-tuting him in his human wholeness, of enabling him to find unityand harmony with his fellow man and with nature” (p. 3). Frommbelieved that Marx was not concerned primarily with equalizing in-come. His main interest was in stopping work from being an alien-ating experience. He quotes Marx’s comments in volume one ofCapital that methods of production under capitalism “mutilate thelaborer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of anappendage of a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in hiswork and turn it into a hated toil” (p. 52). So for Fromm, “Marx’scentral criticism of capitalism is not the injustice in the distribution


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of wealth; it is the perversion of labor into forced, alienated, mean-ingless labor” (p. 42).

In fact Fromm’s analysis of alienation deepened and broad-ened Marx’s initial exposition of the idea. Fromm contended thatMarx underestimated the intensity and pervasiveness of alienationwhich had become “the fate of the vast majority of people, espe-cially of the ever increasing segment of the population whichmanipulate symbols and men, rather than machines” (Fromm,1961, p. 56). In contemporary society, people “worship things, themachines which produce things—and in this alienated world theyfeel as strangers and quite alone” (p. 57). In such works as Escapefrom Freedom (1941), Man for Himself (1947), and The Sane Society(1956a), Fromm illustrates the power of the concept of alienation,extending it from the world of work into the domains of politics,recreation, and intimate relationships.

Commodification has distorted even our language to the pointthat our “speech style indicates the prevailing high degree of alien-ation” (1976, p. 31) we feel. Fromm asks us to consider the collo-quial phrase “I have a problem” and the commodification thissignifies. He writes that “by saying ‘I have’ a problem instead of ‘Iam troubled,’ subjective experience is eliminated; the I of experi-ence is replaced by the it of possession . . . I have transformedmyself into ‘a problem’ and am now owned by my creation” (p. 31).This commodification of language further ensures that in allaspects of modern life “one experiences oneself as a commodityor, rather, simultaneously as the seller and the commodity to besold” (p. 146).

As a counter to alienation, Fromm (1965) proposed a versionof socialism that he called humanistic or communitarian socialism.This kind of socialism did not stress the equalization of income ordistribution of profits. Its emphasis was on the creation of a work-place in which workers controlled the pace and form of production.Instead of being separated from each other and denied the oppor-tunity to exercise their own creative energies, workers in a trulysocialist system experience work as an associative and creative activ-ity. Fromm traces this version of socialism to what he claims are thehumanistic underpinnings of Marx’s version of socialism. He writesthat “the principle goal of socialism for Marx is the recognitionand realization of man’s true needs, which will be possible only


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when production serves man and capital ceases to create and ex-ploit the false needs of man” (1961, p. 59). To Fromm, socialism ismore about human creativity then economic arrangements. It is“a form of production and an organization of society in which mancan overcome alienation from his product, from his work, from hisfellow man, from himself and from nature” (p. 59). A socialist soci-ety is one in which people feel connected to each other, able to dis-cover and exercise their own creative impulses, and aware of theirrelationship to the natural environment. In such a society, a per-son will be able to “return to himself and grasp the world with hisown powers thus becoming one with the world” (p. 59).

In many ways, Fromm anticipates Habermas’ later articulationof socialism as a system enabling people to have the freest conver-sation possible about how they wish to live. In an interview Haber-mas declares that “socialism is only useful if it serves as the idea ofthe epitome of the necessary conditions for emancipated forms oflife, about which the participants themselves would have to reachunderstanding” (Habermas, 1994, p. 113). Similarly, Frommstresses the participatory and democratic aspects of socialism as asystem in which people participate in a continuous conversationabout their aspirations and how these might be realized givenlimited resources.

It is not an enormous stretch to see in Fromm’s vision of com-munitarian socialism a larger sketch of the processes that would beobservable in adult education classrooms striving to realize someprinciples of participatory democracy. In such classrooms theobject would be to make adult education serve the true needs oflearners instead of satisfying their false needs. False needs will bethose that uncritically mimic the aspirations of the dominant cul-ture such as learning to compete more effectively against otherlearners, learning skills that allow people to acquire more andmore possessions they do not really need, or learning how to adaptone’s thinking and behavior to prevailing mores and cultural pat-terns. In seeking to overcome the individual adult’s alienation fromlearning and from her fellow learners, an adult classroom wouldemphasize cooperative ways of working. It would regard the indi-vidual pursuit of truth, beauty, and knowledge as the exception tothe collaborative rule. Adult education as communitarian social-ism would be dialogic, an attempt to create a continuous conver-


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sation among learners about the direction of learning in which allvoices would be heard equally.

Fromm was careful to distinguish communitarian socialism fromstate socialism which “leaves the worker in bondage” (1956a, p. 285).He was stinging in his criticism of rigidly totalitarian states thatdeclared themselves to be socialist but that actually perverted idealsof socialism. Such perversions prevented those in the noncommu-nist world from giving any consideration to the links between democ-racy and socialism. To Fromm, “socialism is incompatible with abureaucratic, thing-centered, consumption-oriented social system,that is incompatible with the materialism and cerebralization thatcharacterize the Soviet, like the capitalist, system” (1976, p. 157). Animportant purpose of socialism was “the elimination of the secretrule of those who, though few in number, wield great economicpower without any responsibility to those whose fate depends in theirdecisions” (1941, p. 299). Such an arbitrary and unjust exercise ofpower was as characteristic of totalitarian state socialism as it was ofcapitalism. What Fromm believed in was “a rational economic sys-tem serving the purposes of the people” (p. 299) which would“replace manipulation of men by active co-operation” (p. 300).

Some of his strongest statements concerning the need for so-cialism appeared in the post-McCarthy era at the height of the coldwar. In a text published a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis, herefers to the socialist ideal as “the most important authentic spiri-tual movement in the Western world” (1962, p. 142). In The SaneSociety (1956a), he calls socialism “one of the most significant, ide-alistic and moral movements of our age” (1956a, p. 247) arguingthat where overcoming alienation is concerned “the only con-structive solution is that of Socialism, which aims at a fundamentalreorganization of our economic and social system . . . creating asocial order in which human solidarity, reason and production arefurthered rather than hobbled” (p. 277). A socialist workplace isone “in which every working person would be an active and respon-sible participant, where work would be attractive and meaningful,where capital would not employ labor, but labor would employ cap-ital” (p. 283). In Fromm’s analysis, learning at the workplace isclearly contiguous with learning to replace the production of goodsthat satisfy the false needs of people and create wealth for a small


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minority with a process whereby production enhances the person’ssense that she is creating something both useful and beautiful.

The Social Character of CapitalismAlthough Fromm clearly viewed Marx (along with Freud) as cen-tral to the critical tradition, he identified “important questionswhich were not dealt with adequately in Marxist theory” (1965,p. 233). One of the most important of these was “why is it that asociety succeeds in gaining the allegiance of most of its members,even when they suffer under the system and even if their reasontells them that their allegiance is harmful to them?” (p. 233).Fromm’s answer to this question lay in the concept of the socialcharacter, a central element of The Sane Society. Social character is“the nucleus of the character structure which is shared by mostmembers of the same culture” (1956a, p. 78). Seen from thetwenty-first century, with its emphasis on fragmented identities, vir-tual realities, and cultural diversity, social character is one of theweakest elements in Fromm’s thought. Indeed, Fromm’s wholeemphasis on inherent human needs “like the striving for happi-ness, harmony love and freedom” (p. 81) appears faintly comic tocontemporary sensibilities. Few adult educators today would stateconfidently, as Fromm did, that “there are certain factor’s in man’snature which are fixed and unchangeable” (1941, p. 37) such as“the necessity to avoid isolation and moral aloneness” (p. 37), theneed to cooperate with others (p. 35), and “the drive for freedominherent in human nature” (p. xiv).

In stressing how human drives prompt people to resist ideolog-ical domination and take an active role in shaping their experiencesand culture, however, Fromm does sound a more contemporarynote. A human being “is not a blank sheet of paper on which cul-ture writes its text” (1956a, p. 81) but someone with agency, who canstand against ideological manipulation. In fact, Fromm’s ideas onthe development of social character are perhaps best understood asdescribing a process of ideological formation through which peoplelearn habits and dispositions that support the existing system.Fromm himself sometimes speaks of the concept this way. In a passage analyzing how social character ensures ideological domina-tion, he writes that “it is the social character’s function to mold and


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channel human energy within a given society for the purpose of thecontinued functioning of that society” (p. 79).

Under capitalism, social character takes on a particular forma-tion. In his view, “modern capital needs men who cooperatesmoothly and in large numbers; who want to consume more andmore; and whose tastes are standardized and can be easily influ-enced and anticipated” (1956b, p. 85). As capitalism developed, itrequired that each person “be molded into a person who was eagerto spend most of his energy for the purpose of work, who acquireddiscipline, particularly orderliness and punctuality, to a degreeunknown in most other cultures” (1956a, p. 80). This process ofcharacter formation had to be all enveloping so that people werenot aware of any kind of manipulation. Hence, “the necessity for work,for punctuality and orderliness had to be transformed into an innerdrive for these aims . . . society had to produce a social character inwhich these strivings were inherent” (p. 80). In this analysis Frommsounds distinctly Foucaultian. In capitalism, workers discipline them-selves to behave in ways that support the existing social and eco-nomic order. But this disposition is not something of which peopleare consciously aware. Foucault would say that the external gaze thatensures that people are punctual, driven, and assiduously followingthe rules has been successfully “interiorized”; that is, it is now expe-rienced as a constituent element of the personality.

Contemporary capitalism has some important “characterolog-ical features,” to use Fromm’s phrase. First, the market requirespeople who are malleable in the extreme to serve as consumers ofits products. The more malleable consumers are, the better theyare suited to capitalism. Ideally, global capitalism is best served bylarge populations that equate living with consuming, that gaintheir identities from the purchase of certain branded products,and that shy away from buying anything too idiosyncratic. Thegreater the standardization of taste and consumption patternsacross national boundaries, the more effectively production canbe streamlined and commodities marketed. Thus, contemporarycapitalism produces people “who want to consume more andmore, and whose tastes are standardized and can be easily influ-enced and anticipated” (1956a, p. 110). Such people like nothingbetter than to buy the latest computer game and watch the latestDisney film while wearing similarly branded clothes and shoes, all


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the while knowing that across the world numerous others aresimultaneously engaged in the same activity.

Ideological standardization is the second “characterologicalfeature” of capitalism; “just as modern mass production methodsrequire the standardization of commodities, so the social process re-quires standardization of man, and this standardization is called‘equality’” (Fromm, 1956b, p. 16). People’s malleability as con-sumers is matched by their ideological malleability. The standard-ization of consumer taste extends into the social and politicaldomain leading to a standardization of social behavior and politicalopinion. People are produced who are “willing to be commanded,to do what is expected, to fit into the social machine without fric-tion” (p. 110). Such individuals crave conformity, to feel part of amass that feels the same impulses and thinks the same thoughts insynchronization. They “are governed by the fear of the anonymousauthority of conformity” (p. 102). This is the basic thesis of Escapefrom Freedom (1941), Fromm’s attempt to explain the rise of fascistand totalitarian regimes.

Identifying and combating these two characterological featuresare important purposes for adult education. Fromm posed a clearchoice for the future—“between robotism (of both the capitalistand communist variety) or Humanistic, Communitarian Socialism”(1956a, p. 363). Communitarian socialism would be based on shar-ing work, sharing experience, and sharing profits. Adult educationcould provide an opportunity for people to experience an analogof this system. If enough people participated in adult educationthat was a noncompetitive sharing of common experience, it couldprovide a template for creating wider social realignments that real-ized this cooperative impulse.

The Alienating Character of CapitalismFromm views the distinguishing character of capitalism as the ele-vation, to practically the exclusion of all else, of the economicdomain of life. Its leitmotif is the use of people as if they were eco-nomic objects: “The owner of capital uses other men for the pur-pose of his own profit. . . a living human being, ceases to be an endin himself, and becomes the means for the economic interests ofanother man, or himself, or of an impersonal giant, the economic


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machine” (1956a, p. 93). A necessary corollary of assessing humanworth in economic terms is the elevation of materialistic valuesover human values of compassion, skill, or creativity. Thus, “in thecapitalistic hierarchy of values, capital stands higher than labor,amassed things higher than the manifestations of life. . . things arehigher than man” (p. 95). Humanity is diminished as qualities suchas a person’s energy, skill, personality, and creativity become objec-tified—assets to be sold on the market of interpersonal relations.Under capitalism, “the market decides the value of these humanqualities” with the result that “relations between human beings . . .assume the character of relations between things” (1941, p. 140).Each person “sells himself and feels himself to be a commodity”(p. 140).

In describing how the laws of the market corrupt personal rela-tions, Fromm anticipates Habermas’ ideas on the colonization ofthe lifeworld, a theme that has produced some provocative cri-tiques of contemporary adult education (Welton, 1995; Newman,1999). Fromm writes that in the United States today “our wholeculture is based on the appetite for buying, on the idea of a mutu-ally favorable exchange” (1956b, p. 3). Human communicationand interpersonal feelings are distorted by the application of a cost-benefit analysis way of thinking to our relationships. The logic ofthe exchange economy pervades all aspects of life, and “in all socialand personal relations the laws of the market are the rule” (1941,p. 139). This is because “in capitalistic society exchanging hasbecome an end in itself” (1956a, p. 146), a metaphor for how weconceive the conduct of a well-conceived life. Thus, “the wholeprocess of living is experienced analogously to the profitable invest-ment of capital, my life and my person being the capital which isinvested” (p. 148). Everyday life reflects this as people talk of howthey have “invested” themselves in their marriages, children, andfriendships.

Clearly, then, the most personal relationships are subject to thisdrive for exchange, and Fromm is pessimistic in his view of the pos-sibility for love and friendship. A relationship between two people istypically “one between two machines, who use each other. . . every-body is to everybody else a commodity” (1956a, p. 139). Hence,“one speaks of human relations and one means the most in-humanrelations, those between alienated automatons” (p. 182). This is


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true even when talking of those who claim to be in love. In Fromm’sview people “fall in love when they feel they have found the bestobject available on the market, considering the limitations of theirown exchange value” (1956b, p. 3). When love is conceived as anexchange, then true intimacy—“union under the condition of pre-serving one’s integrity” (p. 20)—is impossible. This is because“automatons cannot love” (p. 87). The best they can hope for is that“they can exchange their personality packages and hope for a fairbargain” (p. 87).

Another sign of an alienated life is an inability to engage whollyand authentically with a work of art. Fromm contends that whenpeople in the contemporary era view a work of art or piece of en-tertainment their first response is to ask, “Is it worth the money wespent?” When people make major decisions in work, relationships,politics, and recreation they apply a cost-benefit analysis to “theconcept of life as an enterprise which should show a profit” (1956a,p. 150). From this perspective a life well-lived is one showing a bal-ance of happiness and fulfillment firmly in the black column. Thisturns the individual into a person concerned primarily with sellinga personality, something Fromm viewed as the triumph of the mar-keting orientation in social life. To someone exhibiting a market-ing orientation, “his body, his mind and his soul are his capital, andhis task in life is to invest it favorably, to make a profit of himself.Human qualities like friendliness, courtesy, kindness, are trans-formed into commodities, into assets of the ‘personality package’conducive to a higher price on the personality market” (1956a,p. 142). Certainly, in reviewing the prospectuses of some propri-etary adult education centers, it is striking how many course titlesinvite adults to learn how to sell their personalities more effectively,whether that be through flirting, networking, or learning how tonavigate organizational cultures.

As the metaphor of the market comes to pervade and domi-nate our worldview, Fromm believes that we feel that control of ourlives has slipped out of our hands. After all, the market is a vast andinaccessible phenomenon, the intersection of millions of individ-ual decisions made by strangers in places of which we know noth-ing. It is beset by seemingly unpredictable and uncontrollablecrises that come out of nowhere—booms and busts, depressions,recessions and expansions. The indicator of the society’s economic


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health—the stock market—becomes fetishized, viewed as a capri-cious being controlled by the whims of magical forces inaccessibleto our influence. In this situation the individual becomes “an in-strument in the hands of overwhelmingly strong forces outside ofhimself” (1941, p. 141), deeply affected by a sense of powerlessness.

When the market becomes the lens through which we view life,then the value of existence becomes determined by a series of cal-culations. Fromm believed that capitalism caused people to thinkof the world around them and each other as composed of stan-dardized, abstract qualities. Under capitalism there is “an almostexclusive reference to the abstract qualities of things and people,and . . . a neglect of relating oneself to their concreteness anduniqueness” (1956a, p. 114). The individual is “experienced as theembodiment of a quantitative exchange value” (p. 116), somethingwhose value can be assessed and tabulated. Not surprisingly, per-haps, bureaucrats in business, government, and labor unions feelfree to “manipulate people as though they were figures, or things”(p. 126). In Fromm’s view this cultural veneration of abstractionand quantification prepared the ground for moral outrages suchas genocide. The Holocaust became viewed by its Nazi perpetra-tors as an abstract exercise in engineering in which the centrallogistical problem was how best to arrange the extermination oflarge numbers of objects that possessed no concrete, unique exis-tence for them. This horror was made possible by the fact that “welive in figures and abstractions; since nothing is concrete, nothingis real. Everything is possible, factually and morally” (p. 120).

Dimensions of Alienation in Adult LifeFromm relied heavily on Marx’s idea of commodity fetishism toexplain how alienation is experienced in contemporary society.Given McLaren and West’s analysis of the Marxophobia rampantin American life, it is ironic that the Frankfurt School theoristwhose work exhibits the widest popular appeal draws so consis-tently and explicitly on Marxist ideas and language. In terms drawnstraight from Marx’s manuscript on the subject, Fromm definesalienation as “a mode of experience in which the person experi-ences himself as an alien. . . estranged from himself. He does notexperience himself as the center of his world, as the creator of his


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own acts” (1956a, p. 120). The roots of this sense of alienation liein the nature of modern work, which requires that people pourtheir energy into making products which then assume an existenceapart from them. In the contemporary workplace, the worker findsthat “his life forces have flown into a thing” (p. 121) which becomes“something apart from himself, over and against him” (p. 122).

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the concept of virtualreality is sometimes invoked to describe how many people experi-ence the world. If this concept has any validity, then Fromm’s analy-sis of alienation appears remarkably prescient. Alienation is adistancing of people from the world of feelings and sensuality sothat they feel dominated by lifeless objects: “We are surrounded bythings of whose nature and origin we know nothing. . . we live ina world of things, and our only connection with them is that weknow how to manipulate or consume them” (1956a, p. 134). As anexample, consider his description of travel as something experi-enced through the technological intermediary of the camera. Thepurpose of travel for many seems to be the production of photosor videotapes to view when they return home. The traveler “doesnot see anything at all, except through the intermediary of thecamera” so that digitalized video records “are the substitute for the experience”(1956a, p. 136). Anyone who depends on com-puters to navigate through their work or life knows the miserablefeeling of dependence on experts Fromm describes whenever thesystem shuts down: “The individual feels helplessly caught in achaotic mass of data and with pathetic patience waits until the spe-cialists have found out what to do and where to go” (1941, p. 276).

Fromm’s extension of commodity fetishism into an analysis oframpant consumerism is still accurate half a century after it ap-peared. A major purpose of life under capitalism is to consume thecommodities we produce, yet the experience of compulsive con-sumption is itself alienating. In the contemporary era, we experience“an ever increasing need for more things, for more consumption . . .but our craving for consumption has lost all connection with the realneeds of man” (1956a, p. 134). We develop what Fromm calls thereceptive orientation in which we desire “to have something new allthe time, to live with a continuously open mouth as it were” (p. 136).Creativity, artistic expression, and personal fulfillment are equatedwith consuming more and more things. Fromm becomes positively


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lyrical in his description of how commodity fetishism becomes con-verted into the consumer ethic: “The world is one great object forour appetite, a big apple, a big bottle, a big breast; we are the suck-lers, the eternally expectant ones, the hopeful ones—and the eter-nally disappointed ones” (p. 166).

Education (including adult education) is, of course, no excep-tion to the process of commodification. The education system“generally tries to train people to have knowledge as a possession,by and large commensurate with the amount of property or socialprestige they are likely to have in later life” (1976, p. 48). Educa-tional institutions “give each student a certain amount of culturalproperty” (p. 43) or a “luxury-knowledge package” (p. 49) with“the size of each package being in accord with the person’s prob-able social prestige” (p. 49). Knowledge becomes equated withcontent, with “fixed clusters of thought, or whole theories” (p. 37)that students store. In this system teachers are reduced to “bureau-cratic dispensers of knowledge” (1968, p. 120). This commodifiedcontent, transmitted bureaucratically, is alienated from learners’lives and experiences: “The students and the content of the lec-tures remain strangers to each other, except that each student hasbecome the owner of a collection of statements made by somebodyelse” (1976, p. 37).

Fromm also extended Marx’s idea of commodity fetishism (theworship of things to the extent that they are imbued with magicalqualities and powers) into the realm of political discourse, observ-ing that “the fetishism of words is as dangerous in the realm of po-litical ideology as it is in that of religious ideology” (1962, p. 159).Fromm feels that today words have become a substitute for concretepolitical action, so that making a speech is considered a significantact of social change. Yet language as a substitute for political inter-vention is illusory, allowing politicians to seem to be doing some-thing when actually doing nothing. Words don’t change the world,deeds do; “the idea which remains a word only changes words”(1962, p. 177). A media and politically literate adult must be helpedto see that “words have meaning only in the total context of deedand character; unless there is unity among these factors words serveto deceive—others and oneself; instead of revealing, they have thefunction of hiding” (1962, p. 159). In terms echoing Orwell’s(1946) analysis of the perversions of political language, Fromm


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argues that a task of adult education must be to make adults awareof doublespeak, of when an utterance means exactly the oppositeof what it purports to mean, as in “calling Franco and other dicta-tors ‘representatives of the free world’” (1962, p. 160).

Fromm’s analysis of political alienation looks back to J. S. Mill’sideas on the tyranny of the majority and forward to the contempo-rary perversion of political discourse by television advertising.Fromm argues that we are alienated politically when our politicalparticipation is reduced to being forced to choose between candi-dates we had no hand in selecting and who represent mammothparties financed by giant, yet often invisible, corporate interests.Voters are blanketed by political commercials that dull the capac-ity for critical thought. Not surprisingly, “this situation gives the aver-age citizen a deep sense of powerlessness in political matters” withthe result that “political intelligence is reduced more and more”(1956a, p. 191). Given the current widespread cynicism regardingpolitics and the widespread dismissal of political commercials aspropaganda, this may seem an overly pessimistic conclusion to draw.However, it is salutary to reflect on Fromm’s warnings of the effectsthat the “increasing power of monopolistic capital” (1941, p. 141)have on the political process. Writing before the influence of cor-porate lobbyists and political action committees had become theaccepted currency of politics, Fromm decried the fact that “an enor-mous though secret power over the whole society is exercised by asmall group, on the decisions of which depends the fate of a largepart of society” (p. 141).

In this part of his work, Fromm is outlining a political literacyproject for adult education. Any socially responsible adult educa-tion program must include as part of its curriculum some offeringsthat show how those with the most capital attempt to purchase thegreatest access to opinion-making organizations. Such a programwould show that free speech is often bought speech, that gettingone’s ideas or opinions into the public sphere depends on havingthe capital to buy media outlets that can disseminate these ideas.Such a program would show how media must always be thought ofas big businesses and how news divisions of major media outletsare heavily influenced by the interests of corporate sponsors. Itwould highlight the need networks feel to present news in an enter-


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taining way so as to keep the maximum audience tuned in, therebyensuring the charging of higher rates for commercials.

In particular, Fromm’s emphasis on how an unrepresentativeminority exerts disproportionate influence over political affairsclearly anticipates Newman’s (1994) call to name the enemy. If, asFromm says, “an enormous though secret power over the wholesociety is exercised by a small group,” and if this group can exertcontrol over political discourse out of all proportion to their sizein the society, then a crucial adult educational task becomes to con-duct appropriate research and inquiry to name the members ofthis group. In Newman’s (1994) words, “We need to ask: who arethe people, what are the organizations promoting the reorganiza-tion of capitalism? Where do they operate? Can we name them anddo they have an address?” (p. 149).

Alienated politics is most tragically evident in the practice ofdemocracy, for many people the most hopeful grand narrative of thetwenty-first century. Fromm rejects the rhetoric of democracy asliberation from tyranny, arguing instead that the democraticprocess has transmogrified into the tyranny of the majority. In ourage of conformity, “the democratic method has more and moreassumed the meaning that a majority decision is necessarily right,and morally superior to that of the minority, and hence has themoral right to impose its will on the minority” (1956a, p. 340). Hecited with scorn the advertising slogan that “Ten Million Ameri-cans Can’t Be Wrong” as evidence of how the epistemic distortionof equating validity with majority opinion had spread through soci-ety. “Nothing is further from the truth” (1941, p. 14) he argued,than to believe that agreement and consensus represent a higherepistemological authority. To Fromm, “consensual validation assuch has no bearing whatsoever on reason or mental health”(p. 15). In fact it often represents a deliberate suppression of crit-ical thought through the exclusion of divergent opinions.

It is interesting to remember these words when we find our-selves practicing the difficult and contradictory process of tryingto democratize adult education classrooms. Adult educators com-mitted to democratic process can easily find themselves turninginstinctively to the principle of majority vote when working with agroup of adults to decide collectively what and how to learn. Yet,as Fromm points out, the majority opinion in an adult classroom


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may stand firmly against anything that disturbs the familiarity ofteacher authority, didactic transmission of information, and cur-riculum being decided by omniscient strangers in far off places.Shor’s (1996) and Cale’s (2001) studies illustrate how a majorityof adults will usually choose not to rock the boat by challengingconventional thinking on race, class, or gender or by opting to ex-plore political dynamics outside, and especially inside, the adultclassroom. Cale’s study of a writing class for adults shows how anapparent act of resistance—asking adults to take a measure of con-trol in choosing what to learn—can end up reproducing dominantideology. His students chose to avoid contentious racial issues andto stay close to home with familiar topics.

Here is one of the unresolvable tensions of critical practice: Canadult educators respect the agendas adults bring to a democraticnegotiation of curriculum whilst contradictorily challenging theseagendas by offering (and sometimes insisting on) radically different,politically contentious options for study? Fromm argues that adulteducators must insist on paying attention to alternative, minorityviewpoints. Otherwise the process of automaton conformity—ofpeople choosing to think and do what they suppose everyone elsethinks and does—runs rampant. Deliberately suppressing alterna-tive perspectives because these have not been endorsed by major-ity opinion is one of the chief indicators that automaton conformityis in place and unchallenged.

Automaton ConformityIn Fromm’s view alienation as a pervasive mode of existence is mostevident in the phenomenon of automaton conformity. This idea isexplained most fully in Escape from Freedom though its presence isfelt in all Fromm’s other writing. Automaton conformity describesthe process of social manipulation that results in the adult strivingto be exactly the same as he or she imagines the majority to be.When we succumb to such conformity, we become “cogs in thebureaucratic machine, with our thoughts, feelings, and tastesmanipulated by the government industry and the mass communi-cations that they control” (Fromm, 1976, p. 12). The flight intoautomaton conformity was one of the two possible responses


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Fromm identified to the fear of freedom (the other being to seekrefuge in submission to fascist and totalitarian leaders).

In Escape from Freedom (titled The Fear of Freedom in England),Fromm argued that the decline of traditional mores and thegrowth of secularism had made people more and more aware ofthe fact that they were free to choose how to think and live. Thisrecognition was a source of terror rather than pleasure to mostpeople. The central thesis of Escape from Freedom is that “the processof growing human freedom . . . means growing isolation, insecu-rity, and thereby growing doubt concerning one’s own role in theuniverse, the meaning of one’s life, and with all that a growing feel-ing of one’s own powerlessness and insignificance as an individual”(1941, p. 51). Faced with the void of freedom, people turn to twoavenues of escape—“submission to a leader, as has happened infascist countries, and the compulsive conforming as is prevalent inour own democracy” (p. 155).

Of these two avenues, it is automaton conformity that is the mostsubtle and intriguing, and ultimately the most alienating. The in-dividual attempts to escape the burden of freedom “by transform-ing himself into a small cog in the machine, well fed, and wellclothed . . . yet not a free man but an automaton” (1941, p. xii). Bydoing this people escape the anxiety produced by the awareness oftheir freedom; “if I am like everybody else, if I have no feelings orthoughts which make me different . . . I am saved; saved from thefrightening experience of aloneness” (1956b, p. 13). The subtlety ofautomaton conformity is that the pressure to conform is appliedinternally, not externally, an example of disciplinary power in action;“people want to conform to a much higher degree than they areforced to conform, at least in the Western democracies” (p. 13). Theauthority one is submitting to by conforming is anonymous—theauthority of imagined common sense, public opinion, conventionalwisdom. Fromm sounds a distinctively Foucaultian note in his ob-servation that “in anonymous authority both command and com-mander have become invisible” (1941, p. 190) with the power ofpublic opinion obscured by social habit and political ideology. Inthis perspective information about the correct ways to think and actis inscribed in the cultural DNA.

Fromm’s description of automaton conformity also echoesGramsci’s writing on hegemony. The power of anonymous authority


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comes from its all pervasive, yet invisible, nature. Like fish unawareof the water in which they live, citizens swim unsuspectingly in theocean of anonymous authority. We are surrounded by an “atmos-phere of subtle suggestion which actually pervades our whole sociallife . . . one never suspects that there is any order which one isexpected to follow” (1941, p. 190). Under the enveloping influ-ence of anonymous authority, “the individual ceases to be himself;he adopts entirely the kind of personality offered to him by culturalpatterns and he . . . becomes exactly as all others are and as theyexpect him to be” (pp. 208–209). Any anxiety people might feelabout this kind of existence concerns whether or not they are suf-ficiently assiduous in pursuing and realizing the pattern of con-formity. The automaton conformist’s credo can be summarizedthus: “I must conform, not be different, not ‘stick out’; I must beready and willing to change according to the changes in the pat-tern; I must not ask whether I am right or wrong, but whether I amadjusted, whether I am not ‘peculiar,’ not different” (1956a, p. 153).

Automaton conformity has crucial consequences, according toFromm. One is the spread of pseudophenomena. AnticipatingBaudrillard’s (1983) concept of hyperreality and his contentionthat viewing representations of experience has replaced the directexperience of the sensuous world, Fromm argued that when peo-ple’s opinions and reasons mimic dominant ideology we havepseudothinking (1941, p. 217), pseudoreasoning (p. 215), and theevolution of a pseudoself (p. 290). Connected to the emergenceof pseudothought is the stamping out of original ideas and self-directed learning. Although freedom of thought, speech, andaction are cornerstones of American ideology, Fromm believedthat automaton conformity had worked to erase these elementsfrom the culture. In his view, “original decision is a comparativelyrare phenomenon in a society which supposedly makes individualdecision the cornerstone of its existence” (1941, p. 225). We ven-erate the ideal of a society full of staunchly rugged individualsdefending the right to think, say, and do whatever they wish, butthe reality is that “we have become automatons who live under theillusion of being self-willing individuals . . . everybody and every-thing has become instrumentalised” (p. 279).

This decline in originality of thought and decision inevitablyworks to kill individual conscience and with it the possibility of


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morally inspired revolution. In The Sane Society (1956a), Frommposed the rhetorical question “How can conscience develop whenthe principle of life is conformity?” (p. 173). To him, “conscienceby its very nature is non-conforming” because its distinctive featureis that it allows a person “to say no, when everybody else says yes”(p. 173). When people are consumed by the need to conform, theycannot hear the voice of conscience, much less act on it.

The pressure to conform is raised to almost irresistible levelsin times of war when the expression of opposition to militaryaction (as, for example, in the unilateral invasions of Vietnam orIraq) can be stigmatized in the early stages of war as unpatriotic.In this atmosphere advocates of war strive to define dissent aseither irrational or evil. This kind of unthinking agreement withcalls to patriotism is much easier to ensure when we think of our-selves as things or commodities. After all, conscience has no placein the life of inert objects. Through automaton conformity we cedethe responsibility for developing conscience and for conscientiousobjection to the judges of normality (echoes of Foucault again)that are everywhere. When the power of individual conscience isneutralized, then what is considered “normal” thought becomesthe responsibility of specialists in psychoanalysis, psychiatry, andpsychology who “tell you what the ‘normal’ person is, and, corre-spondingly, what is wrong with you; they devise the methods tohelp you adjust, be happy, be normal” (p. 168).

Automaton conformity inevitably results in a suppression ofcritical thinking. As we strive to conform to anonymous authorityand as we feel increasingly powerless in the face of the massivestructures (corporations, political parties, labor unions) and forces(advertising, political propaganda) confronting us, we lose thecapacity to think critically. In Fromm’s view, “these methods ofdulling the capacity for critical thinking are more dangerous toour democracy than many of the open attacks against it” (1941,p. 150). We are unable to see the big picture, to realize that we arepart of a system that operates deliberately to diminish our agencyand suppress our ability to ask critical questions. It was clear toFromm that a most effective “way of paralyzing the ability to thinkcritically is the destruction of any kind of structuralized picture of the world” (p. 276). Life becomes seen as “composed of many


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little pieces, each separate from the other and lacking any sense asa whole” (p. 277).

In this analysis a crucial role is suggested for adult education,that of teaching a structuralized worldview. Fromm is here offer-ing us a clear purpose for adult education, one that fits firmly with-in the tradition of adult education as a field of practice focused onhelping adults learn democracy. A structuralized view of the worldis one that emphasizes how individual decisions are framed bymuch broader social structures and economic forces. It requires afamiliarity with history, political economy, and sociology. Frommargued that the development of such a structuralized view wasreally only possible with adult learners. In his way of thinking,adults not only had a greater interest in developing such a per-spective, but they also possessed the intellectual capability to dothis in a way that was not possible for them in adolescence.

An interpretation of Fromm’s call to develop a structuralizedpicture of the world is something that Fromm’s contemporary C.W. Mills attempted to provide. Like Fromm, Mills had written apopular text on Marxism (Mills, 1962), and like him he hadthought deeply about the social purpose of adult education. In aslim pamphlet published by the Center for the Study of LiberalEducation for Adults (Mills, 1954), Mills anticipates his own argu-ment in The Sociological Imagination (1959)—that a structuralizedview of the world emerges when adults learn “to turn personaltroubles and concerns into social issues and rationally open prob-lems” (1954, p. 12). If adults start to see situations in their privatelives as concrete manifestations of broader social and political con-tradictions, they will see that changing their individual lives isimpossible without political action. Hence, “to the extent that theadult college is effective, it is going to be political; its students aregoing to try to influence decisions of power” (p. 16).

Fromm and Mills both emphasized the necessity of adults un-derstanding how the particular circumstances of their lives wereproduced by the intersection of political decisions, social and eco-nomic trends, and the workings of capital. Divorce, unemployment,unhappiness, and isolation must be interpreted not as the capri-cious workings of a cruel fate but as the result of decisions made bythe (often secret) few in positions of enormous power. Factoriesclose and jobs are lost not because the economy somehow catches


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a cold. These things happen because companies relocate to otherstates or countries where nonunionized labor is cheap and plenti-ful, or because governing boards decide to merge with otherboards, or because by “downsizing” or “rightsizing” its operations acompany’s stockholder dividends are likely to be higher.

Even the most private and traumatic tearings in the fabric ofpersonal relationships, such as divorce, should be understood associal and political phenomena. The restlessness and unfulfilleddesires that lie behind a divorce are manifestations of the receptiveorientation that predispose people to want more and more with noprospect of achieving anything more than temporary satisfaction—the eternally expectant ones forever doomed to be the eternally disappointed ones, as Fromm put it. Alternatively, divorce, unhap-piness, and isolation are the result of people needing to leave theirhome communities in search of work that will provide them withthe financial means to satisfy their appetite for the commoditiesthey feel are necessary to create the good life.

Teaching a structuralized view of the world moves adults awayfrom magical consciousness (in Freire’s terms) to an awareness ofhow ideology, culture, and economics intersect to shape individ-ual lives. In Fromm’s opinion possessing such an awareness is thenecessary precursor to people deciding that alienating socialarrangements could be reshaped by individual and collective will.So helping people develop a structuralized view of the world is oneway Fromm believes adult education can lay the foundations forsocial action. Without learning this view, there is little chance thatpeople can recognize, let alone oppose, “the consensus of stupid-ity” (1962, p. 182) that will most likely ensure environmental self-destruction. The task of adult education is to break the chains ofillusion that bind people to an individualized view of life and todevelop in them the capacity for reason—“the capacity to recog-nize the unreality of most of the ideas that man holds, and to pen-etrate to the reality veiled by the layers and layers of deception andideologies” (1962, p. 179).

Adult Learning as Democratic ParticipationEarlier I argued that Fromm’s vision of a humanistic, communi-tarian socialism could serve as an analog for the conduct of the


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adult education classroom. If “human activity is paralyzed in thecapitalist system,” then the goal of socialism must be “to restore fullhumanity by restoring activity in all spheres of life” (1976, p. 99).Politically, this meant the creation of a participatory democracythat would liberate people from the commodified, “having” modeof existence. Fromm proposed a network of face-to-face groupsthat would coalesce into town-meeting sized assemblies of notmore than five hundred people. This network of assemblies wouldconstitute a lower house to monitor and advise the elected legisla-ture on a day-to-day basis.

Within these small face-to-face groups, adults would be en-joined to behave in ways appropriate to participatory democracy.In his outline for these processes, Fromm focuses quite concretelyon the conditions and dispositions for dialogic learning. In par-ticipatory adult learning groups, members exhibit a disposition tohelp others learn because they regard their peers’ learning as cru-cial to their own individual development. They strive to understandwhat others are saying and to “help the other to clarify his thoughtrather than to force him to defend formulations about which hemay have his own doubts” (1968, p. 115). Adults in these groupsare in a “being” mode of learning and strive for a loss of ego: “Theyrespond spontaneously and productively; they forget about them-selves, about the knowledge, the positions they have. Their egosdo not stand in their own way . . . they carefully respond to theother person and that person’s ideas. They give birth to new ideasbecause they are not holding on to anything” (1976, p. 42).

Although he does not reference Lindeman, Fromm is here re-prising some of Lindeman’s sentiments regarding the nature andfunction of adult discussion groups in a democratic society (Lin-deman, [1935] 1987a; Smith and Lindeman, 1951) and thenadding a more psychological sheen by focusing on the loss of ego.To a social psychologist like Fromm, slaying the individual ego andopposing capitalist commodification are two sides of the same coin.When adult learners in discussion groups are disposed to help oth-ers learn, they also help the other “to transcend his or her egocen-tricity” (1976, p. 42). In furthering the loss of ego, “the conversationceases to be an exchange of commodities (information, knowledge,status) and becomes a dialogue in which it does not matter anymore who is right” (p. 42). As the model of conversation as a com-


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bative posturing recedes, so “the duelists begin to dance together. . . with joy” (p. 42).

But Fromm argues that adult learning groups as analogs of par-ticipatory democracy are not just talking shops. They also imposetwo responsibilities on their participants. First, members of suchgroups must strive to ensure that they have access to all pertinentinformation. If organizational procedures or political constraintsblock this access, then adults need to become activists who seek outthe relevant information they need to make good decisions andinsist on its dissemination. Second, participants must all play anactive role in decision making. Participatory democracy is hardwork. It does not allow you to sit back and let others do your think-ing, talking, and deciding for you. What is most likely to galvanizepeople into active involvement in decision making is a convictionthat what they decide actually matters.

Fromm believed that “the knowledge that one’s decision hasan effect” (1976, p. 179) is crucial to the functioning of participa-tory democracy and the missing element in many superficiallydemocratic formats. What is true for democratic experiments inthe wider society is just as true for the adult classroom. A basic indi-cation that a degree of democracy is in place is that the opinionsadults express have some impact on the situation in which theyfind themselves. This does not mean that the will of the majoritymust, by definition, prevail. Indeed, the minority’s perspective maybe the more valid one (as would be the case in an insistence thatdominant ideology obfuscates the extent of repressive power). Butwhere hard-fought decisions emerge from true dialogue, the orig-inators of those decisions need to know that they will have someeffect. Otherwise, why bother?

At National Louis University in Chicago, where participants inthe doctoral program in adult education constitute themselves asa governance assembly to discuss and generate curricular, evalua-tive, and programmatic options, knowing that one’s words countis indeed significant. As described in Avila and others (2000) andBaptiste and Brookfield (1998), no matter what format the stu-dents’ deliberations take, participants expend a great deal ofenergy on talking over their concerns and take the trouble to pro-pose different protocols to guide their conversation, only becausethey believe that whatever they decide will be considered seriously


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by the power holders (the faculty) and stands a good chance ofbeing implemented.

Radical Love and Adult PedagogyAlthough Fromm mentions adult education only occasionally inhis work, we can interpret many of his ideas as offering some guide-lines for its practice. When it comes to the work of teaching,Fromm has much to say in his small but immensely popular book,The Art of Loving (1956b). In this disquisition on the practice oflove, Fromm explains the difficulties of creating loving relation-ships in terms of the constraining and contradictory social ar-rangements flowing from capitalism. In commenting on how thestruggle for intimacy is made harder by capitalism’s influence, hewrites that “to analyze the nature of love is to discover its generalabsence today and to criticize the social conditions which are re-sponsible for this absence” (p. 133).

One important component in the struggle for loving relation-ships under capitalism is the work of teachers. The best teachersof adults exhibit “being authority” and are “highly developed indi-viduals who demonstrate by what they are . . . what human beingscan be” (1976, p. 45). Fromm contends that teachers in the beingmode are “bearers of significant spiritual qualities” (1956b, p. 117)but laments the fact that “we are losing that teaching which is themost important one for human development: the teaching whichcan only be given by the simple presence of a mature, loving per-son” (p. 117). A teaching based on presence, in other words a lov-ing pedagogy, is relational. For an adult educator, such a pedagogycalls for overcoming a narcissistic preoccupation with one’s ownjudgments and interpretations. Doing this ensures that one cangive full attention to the learner’s individual characteristics andexperience. This giving of attention precipitates a giving of manyother things—joy, understanding, interest, knowledge, humor, andsadness (p. 24)—that are returned with interest to the teacher. Inthe act of giving, teachers experience “the highest expression ofpotency” (p. 23) and the benefits of mutuality whereby “theteacher is taught by his students” (p. 25).

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under capitalism. To Fromm, “the principle underlying capitalisticsociety and the principle of love are incompatible” (1956b, p. 131).This is because the exchange economy dynamic stands in straightopposition to the overcoming of narcissism and self-absorption.Under the exchange economy, we view a loving relationship as “amutually favorable exchange” (p. 3), with love as something exist-ing outside our core, a commodity we trade with others for a fairreturn. Love under capitalism is governed by the ethic of fairness,“the particular ethical contribution of capitalist society” (p. 129).Where love is concerned “‘I give you as much as you give me’ . . . isthe prevalent ethical norm in capitalist society” (p. 129). A lovingadult educator constrained by this ethic doles out parcels of love tothose who offer love to the teacher, with the size of each parcelbeing determined by the amount of love directed by the learnertoward the teacher. A loving society, and by implication a lovingpractice of adult education, is premised on an opposition to this tit-for-tat approach and attempts to escape the constraints imposed onteaching-learning relationships by the capitalist dynamic of ex-change. Truly loving adult education is “the practice of a humanpower, which can be practiced only in freedom” (p. 22).

In Fromm’s view learning to teach adults in a loving way issomething that requires discipline, concentration, and, above allelse, practice. Underlying the practice of any art—including adulteducation—is an unequivocal belief in its importance. To the prac-titioner, the practice of a loving adult pedagogy should be one ofthe most important learning projects in life. Fromm wrote that “acondition of learning something is a supreme concern with themastery of the art” (1956b, p. 110). The neophyte practitionershould feel that “there must be nothing else in the world more im-portant than the art” (p. 5). Adult educators who teach in this lov-ing way begin by making a vocational commitment to a calling, inthe manner described by Collins (1991) and Palmer (2000), andthen apply objectivity and faith to all they do.

Objectivity is a concept much derided by contemporary criti-cal theorists who claim that no adult educational practice canescape its situatedness or avoid political implications. In fact, whenFromm talks about objectivity, he is really talking about a mix ofintersubjectivity (the empathic ability to see a situation from theviewpoint of the learner at its center) and bracketing (the attempt,


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never completely successful, to recognize and hold at bay one’sown preconceptions, prejudices, and projections where certainadult learners are concerned). Objectivity entails “the overcomingof one’s narcissism” (Fromm, 1956b, p. 118) and grants the adulteducator the faculty “to see people and things as they are, objec-tively, and to be able to separate this objective picture from a pic-ture which is formed by one’s desires and fears” (p. 118). Strivingto be objective inevitably leads to humility in adult educatorsregarding both their own capacities and the potential of theirlearners. Thus, in teaching adults “humility and objectivity are indi-visible” (p. 120).

From humility springs faith, in particular a faith in the poten-tial of people to build “a social order governed by the principlesof equality, justice and love” (1956b, p. 125). The more experienceadult educators have of their learners, and the longer they prac-tice their craft, the greater the faith they develop in the importanceof their work. Faith can also be thought of as a kind of criticallyinformed insight regarding the complex dynamics of adult educa-tion practice. The more we struggle to overcome our narcissismand see our learners the way they really are, the more we are ableto recognize which of our many impulses, instincts, and institutionsare well grounded and should be taken seriously. This is faith pro-duced by an intentional engagement in critical reflection. ToFromm such reflection leads to “a conviction rooted in one’s ownexperience of thought or feeling” (p. 121) and “confidence inone’s power of thought, observation and judgment” (p. 123).

Developing faith in the validity of our convictions and practicesas adult educators is not, however, only a matter of critical analy-sis. It also calls forth courage. Faith “requires courage, the abilityto take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappoint-ment” (1956b, p. 126). Risk, pain, and disappointment are en-demic to critical practice. Partly this is because pursuing the tasksof critical practice—getting people to challenge ideology, contesthegemony, unmask power, and so on—represent adult educationat its most unpredictable. Critical adult educators need great cre-ativity and experimental flexibility as they seek to circumvent dom-inant practices and expectations. It takes a degree of nerve for anadult teacher to depart from tried and trusted pedagogic formatswhen adult learners bristle at being asked to take responsibility for


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their learning and regard deviation from a didactic norm as irre-sponsible, unprofessional conduct. Adult teachers have to call ontheir courage in the face of learners’ conservatism and in the faceof skepticism or hostility to critical practice voiced by colleagues,supervisors, and the wider society.

In a commodified society and similarly commodified adult edu-cation system, any new or troubling ideas and practices will neces-sarily produce resistance. In Fromm’s view this is because themajority of adult learners are “having” type individuals who settlecomfortably into commodified patterns of learning and education.Predictably, these adults “feel rather disturbed by new thoughts orideas about a subject, because the new puts into question the fixedsum of information they have” (1976, p. 38). After all, to adultsused to possessing “luxury-knowledge packages” any “ideas thatcannot easily be pinned down (or penned down) are frightening”(p. 38). In response to such resistance, a critical adult educatormust have the courage “to stick to one’s convictions even thoughthey are unpopular” (1956a, p. 127). To do what is right, to followone’s vocation (Collins, 1991) requires “the courage to judge cer-tain values as of ultimate concern—and to take the jump and stakeeverything on these values” (Fromm, 1956b, p. 126). In stakingeverything on helping adults overcome the alienation inherent incapitalist society, and in urging the practice of radical love as anorganizing principle for adult pedagogy, Fromm’s work reachesout to us from across the millennial divide.


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Chapter Seven

Learning Liberation

In the late 1960s and early 1970s—the era of the Hippies and BlackPanthers, the French May 1968 revolution, Students for a Demo-cratic Society, race riots in Watts, protests against the war in Viet-nam, beatings of demonstrators at the Chicago DemocraticConvention, and shootings at Kent State University—there wasarguably no more famous public intellectual than Herbert Mar-cuse. This was particularly the case in education. Though he criti-cized aspects of the student movement’s actions as “pubertarianrevolt against the wrong target” (1972, p. 51) and was disturbed bythe slogan of “do your own thing” (which he felt ignored the factthat some things contributed more to liberation than others), hiseffect on educational and social activists was massive.

In a text published at the time, Marks (1970) noted thatdespite death threats from the Ku Klux Klan, contempt fromPravda (the Soviet state-sponsored newspaper), and attempts bythe San Diego post of the American Legion to deprive him of hisacademic post, “he has nevertheless more general popularity thanany other living philosopher” (p. 8). Like Fromm, Marcuse wasread by millions, but unlike Fromm he was regarded as an instiga-tor of and catalyst for oppositional social movements across theWestern world. His emphasis on combating libidinal oppression,emancipating the senses, and striving for new aesthetic, sensuous,and moral sensibilities also fit perfectly the zeitgeist of the timethat encouraged liberation through pharmaceutical and sexualexperimentation. As Habermas (1983) acknowledged, Marcusedeveloped “striking arguments for a new political praxis that inte-grates sensuality, fantasy and desire” (p. 170).

Marcuse’s power as a critical theorist was brought home to mea few years ago during a class I was teaching. I was talking about

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his idea of repressive tolerance and about how the contemporaryemphasis on diversity could be interpreted as an example of thedominant culture’s ability to seem to be opening itself up to dis-senting views and different perspectives, when in fact it was subtlyreasserting its control over public discourse. When we took a breakan African American woman, a veteran of the civil rights move-ment still actively engaged in antiracist education, came up to me.“Marcuse was a beautiful man,” she said, “as soon as you men-tioned his name I knew I could trust you.” What was it about themention of Marcuse that engendered such goodwill? Perhaps itwas his association with the Black Panther and communist activistAngela Davis. Davis, a student of Marcuse’s at Brandeis and thenat the University of California-San Diego, tells of her asking Mar-cuse to be the first to enter the registrar’s office at UC-San Diegowhen the students wished to mount an occupation. This was an actthat meant they could well be arrested and charged with breaking,entering, and trespassing. As she recalls, “Without a moment’s hes-itation, Herbert Marcuse agreed: ‘Of course I’ll do it.’ There wasno question in his mind. At that time he was about seventy-fiveyears old. He was the first person to walk into the registrar’s office”(Davis, 1998a, p. 317).

Perhaps, too, there was goodwill resulting from his placinghope in extraparliamentary direct action by the most disenfran-chised members of society. He supported the Black Power move-ment as a “far more subversive universe of discourse” (Marcuse,1969, p. 35) than the Hippie movement. In the language of Blackmilitants, particularly their claiming of soul—“in its essence lily-white ever since Plato” (p. 36)—and their declaration that “Black isbeautiful,” Marcuse detected “the ingression of the aesthetic intothe political” (p. 36). Black Power represented “a systematic lin-guistic rebellion, which smashes the ideological context in whichthe words are employed and defined, and places them in the oppo-site context—negation of the established one. Thus, the blacks‘take over’ some of the most sublime and sublimated concepts ofWestern civilization, desublimate them and redefine them” (p. 35).To emerging African American scholars of the time such as Lucius T.Outlaw, Jr. (1996, p. xxvii), Marcuse’s work was an entry point intocritical theory that connected it to Black Nationalist critiques ofWhite supremacy.

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In the years since his death in 1979, however, Marcuse’s influ-ence has waned. From being viewed as a prophet of a qualitativelydifferent society struggling to be born, he is now a historical figure,sidelined by the postmodern furor. Part of this may be due to thefact that there have been few new publications of material from the Marcuse archive in Frankfurt, though Kellner (1994) suggestsa wealth of translatable material pertaining to issues of globaliza-tion and postmodernism exists there and has begun to issue someof this in a six-volume series (Marcuse, 2002). Whatever the reason,Marcuse has had little impact on adult learning theory. Comparedto Habermas, Marcuse (like Fromm) is a nonfigure in adult educa-tion discourse. This is a shame, for several reasons. First, Marcuse hasmuch to say on concepts that dominate contemporary adult edu-cation, such as self-directed learning and critical thinking. Second,his analysis of the way in which a tolerant embrace of a diversity ofperspectives works to legitimize domination and repression chal-lenges in fundamental ways practices that many progressive adult edu-cators would heartily endorse. Third, he stresses aspects of adultlearning such as inwardness, privacy, memory, and distance thatreceive little attention from others in the field. Fourth, he forces crit-ical adult educators to take seriously the aesthetic dimension of life,not something that always springs to mind when one thinks of criti-cal adult education.

Marcuse’s insistence on the importance of individual isolationin learning to think critically and his belief that revolutionary strug-gle requires us to look inward to our deepest instinctual impulsesadd a very different tone to contemporary discussions of critical the-ory. Tied to his insistence on the importance of individual isolationand the need for people to create some distance from the dominantculture is his theory of aesthetics. Marcuse believed that individualartistic experiences could trigger a revolutionary estrangement fromeveryday life, thus nurturing the tendency to political critique. ForMarcuse artistic experience threatened the political order, particu-larly where the work of art concerned was highly stylized, perhapseven a part of “highbrow” culture. In acknowledging the liberatorypossibilities of art and in stressing the importance of “rebellious sub-jectivity” (Marcuse, 1978a, p. 7), Marcuse opposes critical theorists’instinctive dismissal of individual isolation as an apolitical and anti-revolutionary turn away from social commitment.


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Marcuse’s Critique of MarxLike all the thinkers reviewed at any length in this book, Marcusedrew heavily on Marxist analysis and that of Marx’s precursorHegel (Marcuse, 1941). But his was a truly critical reappraisal ofMarx, whom he regarded as overly optimistic and idealistic. In Mar-cuse’s view, “Marx underrated the extent of the conquest of natureand of man, of the technological management of freedom and self-realization” (1965b, p. 112). In addition, Marxism had been co-opted and distorted by the Soviet Union to justify repression. Incommunist societies, “the theory that destroyed all ideology is usedfor the establishment of a new ideology” entailing “planning forthe retention of government above and against the individuals”(1958, p. xiv). Marxism had become one more tool in the totaladministration of thought that characterized the technologicallyadvanced societies in East and West alike. Finally, in Marcuse’s view,“Marx was still too tied to the notion of a continuum of progress”(1970, p. 62) and did not appreciate enough the need for a com-plete qualitative change in the structure of human needs. For Mar-cuse such needs as “the need for calm, the need to be alone, withoneself or with others whom one has chosen oneself, the need forthe beautiful, the need for ‘undeserved’ happiness” (p. 67) werepotentially revolutionary, not individual indulgences.

One element of Marcuse’s critique of how Marx’s ideas werebeing distorted—the use of overly specialist leftist jargon—is par-ticularly relevant for adult educators. Marcuse was frustrated by theslavish, repetitive, and ultimately uncritical invocation of Marxistconcepts and slogans that he saw leftist activists and educators slip-ping into. He railed against “the distortion and falsification ofMarxian theory through its ritualization” (1972, p. 33). By mechan-ically repeating a basic vocabulary—proletariat, exploitation, im-poverishment were examples he gave—critically inclined activistsonly ensured “a petrification of Marxian theory into a rhetoric withhardly any relation to reality” (p. 34). Not only did this jargon pet-rify Marxism, it also ensured that educators and activists actuallyundercut the possibility of their reaching those they were trying toteach, whether in the adult classroom or social movements.

Among contemporary adult educators, the issue of whether ornot a critical practice of adult education requires a separate lan-


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guage, untainted by the distortions of the dominant, capitalist cul-ture, generates vigorous disagreement. Can we have a language ofempowering practice, for example, when the very word empowermenthas lost its radical democratic meaning? How can we galvanizetransformative forces and movements when the word transformativeis now used by some to describe the slightest changes in personaloutlook or behavior? Although he acknowledged that specializedradical language was sometimes necessary for communicationamongst a small cadre of activists, he was unequivocal in his criti-cism of those using a specialized “unrealistic language” of leftismto communicate with the masses (Marcuse, 1978b). While termssuch as counterhegemony, emancipatory praxis, or transformative agencymight be permissible shorthand for activists to use with each other,they were disastrous for wider education. Like it or not, he argued,“The ‘people’ speak a language which is all but closed to the con-cepts and propositions of Marxian theory” (Marcuse, 1972, p. 37).

Although he acknowledged that an aversion to “foreign words,‘big words,’ etcetera” (Marcuse, 1972, p. 37) served to bind peo-ple to the language of the establishment, and consequently to theestablishment itself, Marcuse saw little point in forcing the lan-guage of critical theory on them. Indeed, such an imposition waslikely to turn people against radical ideas and kill the oppositionalspirit embedded in radical language. In his words, “bombardingthe people with these terms without translating them into theactual situation does not communicate Marxian theory . . . thesewords become identification labels for in-groups . . . they functionas mere clichés—that is, they don’t function at all. Their use asinstant stimuli in a canned vocabulary kills their truth” (p. 39).

Marcuse’s words have resonance for the literature of criticaladult education. In our field as in most other areas of academicwriting, a specialized form of discourse often develops. Sometimesthis has reflected the field’s desire to distance itself from otherareas of educational practice and to carve out a piece of the worldthat is distinctively its own. Such was partly the case with the termandragogy. Sometimes rarefied language is necessary to capture thecomplexity and distinctiveness of processes that cannot easily bedescribed in colloquial terms. Hegemony would be a good exampleof this. At other times, however, writers throw around terms that


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are understood only by an “in” group of ideologically sympathetictheorists, as a kind of coded, scriptural signaling.

Perhaps the most significant contribution Marcuse made tocritical debate on Marxism was his questioning of the predominantorthodoxy of Marxist aesthetics. This orthodoxy, drawing on theidea that the material base of society determined the ideological,cultural, and artistic superstructure, held that “art represents theinterests and world outlook of particular social classes” (1978a,p. ix). Marcuse rejected such a deterministic equation, arguing that“in contrast to orthodox Marxist aesthetics I see the political poten-tial of art itself, in the aesthetic form as such . . . by virtue of its aes-thetic form, art is largely autonomous vis-à-vis the given socialrelations. In its autonomy art both protests these relations, and atthe same time transcends them” (p. ix). As we shall see later in thischapter, Marcuse believed that the stylized, formal aspects of “high”art could produce an estrangement with reality and that in thisestrangement lay the truly revolutionary potential of art.

In defending individual creativity that produced art contain-ing no explicit political message or intent, Marcuse broke withthose who believe that the content of art should always serve a pre-determined revolutionary purpose. He criticized the way that“Marxist aesthetics has shared in the devaluation of subjectivity, thedenigration of romanticism as simply reactionary; the denuncia-tion of ‘decadent’ art” (1978a, p. 6). For him overtly political artexplicitly dedicated to raising people’s consciousness of oppressionand igniting the fires of change—agitprop theater, socialist real-ism, even the theater of the oppressed (Boal, 1985)—was actuallyless revolutionary than some forms of introspective poetry. Thiswas because “the more immediately political the work of art, themore it reduces the power of estrangement and the radical, tran-scendent goals of change” (Marcuse, 1978a, p. xii). The films ofKen Loach or plays of Dario Fo would not be strongly revolution-ary art, according to Marcuse, since their direct critique of currentsocial conditions do not produce the experience of estrangement,of an altered sense of reality. As Marcuse acknowledged, the logicof his critique meant that “there may be more subversive potentialin the poetry of Baudelaire and Rimbaud than in the didactic playsof Brecht” (p. xiii).


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On a broader scale, Marcuse’s critique of Marx reflects his con-tention that critical theory has lost its way in the world of cyber-space and technological domination. Originally developed as aguide to activating forces, such as the proletariat, that could over-throw the social order, Marxism was rendered less potent when nosuch forces clearly existed. To Marcuse, “the categories of criticalsocial theory were developed during the period in which the needfor refusal and subversion was embodied in the action of effectivesocial forces” (1964, p. xiv). It contained an immanent critique;that is, the pathways to liberation could be detected within the con-tradictions of the existing society. Potentially revolutionary socialforces immanent within society could be guided to create “morerational and freer institutions by abolishing the existing ones whichhad become obstacles to progress” (1964, p. 254). The transfor-mative potential of working-class and other oppositional socialmovements “were the empirical grounds on which the theory waserected, and from these empirical grounds derived the idea of theliberation of inherent possibilities—the development, otherwiseblocked and distorted, of material and intellectual productivity, fac-ulties, and needs” (p. 254).

In the contemporary world, however, Marcuse believed thattechnological and administrative advances have combined “to insti-tute new, more effective, and more pleasant forms of social controland social cohesion” (1964, p. xv). People live in “comfortable,smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom” (p. 1), the experienceof which “makes servitude palatable and perhaps even unnotice-able” (p. 24). The weakness of critical theory in this situation is “itsinability to demonstrate the liberating tendencies within the estab-lished society” (p. 254). The working class, the proletariat, are nolonger active forces for revolutionary social change; indeed, theyare often the most enthusiastic upholders of the status quo. Giventhat critical theory “analyzes society in the light of its used and un-used or abused capabilities for improving the human condition”(p. x), Marcuse felt that a whole new analysis of liberatory forcesand strategies was called for. In these strategies and forces was adistinctive role for adult education.


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One-Dimensional ThoughtAt the core of Marcuse’s work is his belief that we learn our ownservitude and that we have learned to love our condition of oppres-sion. In advanced industrial society, the most pernicious oppres-sion of all is that of affluence. Lulled into stupefaction by thepossession of consumer goods, we believe ourselves to be living indemocratic freedom, when our needs have actually been manipu-lated to convince us we are happy. In reality, a condition of disaf-fection lurks beneath the carapace of everyday life. If we could justsee our alienated state clearly, we would want to liberate ourselvesfrom it. But we have learned to regard half-buried feelings of dis-satisfaction as basically irrational symptoms of neurosis.

This vision of a society controlled by technological advances,consumer luxury, and smoothly functioning administration is mostfully laid out in One Dimensional Man (1964), Marcuse’s most cele-brated book. Before examining this vision, it is important to statethat Marcuse was no Luddite. He believed strongly in the power oftechnology to liberate people from the burdens of unnecessary toiland physical drudgery. In his opinion, “all the material and intel-lectual forces which could be put to work for the realization of afree society are at hand” (Marcuse, 1970, p. 64). That these re-sources are not used for this purpose “is to be attributed to thetotal mobilization of existing society against its own potential forliberation” (p. 64).

At the core of his critique is his contention that in the modernworld technology has been used to create false needs—the need forstupefying work, for the consumption of consumer goods, and for the maintenance of a social order that is inherently repressive.Hence, “the liberating force of technology—the instrumentalizationof things—turns into a fetter of liberation, the instrumentalization ofman” (1964, p. 159). We live in a society characterized by “a non-ter-roristic economic-technical coordination which operates through themanipulation of needs by vested interests” (p. 3). These needs (par-ticularly the need for consumer goods) are created by the dominantcapitalist order and then internalized by us until they are indistin-guishable from our most basic desires, so that we define ourselves,and the attainment of a fulfilled life, in terms of these needs. To Mar-cuse, “existing society is reproduced not only in the mind, the


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consciousness of men, but also in their senses; and no persuasion, notheory, no reasoning can break this prison . . . until the oppressivefamiliarity with the given object world is broken” (1972, p. 72). Anintense encounter with a work of art is one way a sense of estrange-ment from oppressive familiarity can be instigated, thus laying thegroundwork for the development of political awareness.

In the contemporary world, domination is so total and insidi-ous that it has seeped into our synapses, into our most basic waysof apprehending reality: “The so-called consumer economy andthe politics of corporate capitalism have created a second natureof man which ties him libidinally and aggressively to the com-modity form” (1969, p. 11). The needs the system creates in peo-ple are “eminently stabilizing, conservative needs” (p. 11) thatensure we have a “deep rooted, ‘organic’ adaptation of the peopleto a terrible but profitably functioning society” (p. 17). In this soci-ety, it is hard to identify revolutionary forces, since to be dissatis-fied is taken as a sign of inadequacy or psychological disturbance.When “the administered life becomes the good life of the whole”(1964, p. 255), then “the intellectual and emotional refusal ‘to goalong’ appears neurotic and impotent” (p. 9). In times of war, forexample, the refusal to “go along” with invasions of countries thatpose no imminent threat is often portrayed as irrational and con-fused as well as unpatriotic.

What is the administered life? It is a life in which the urgentneed to reproduce the existing order is felt at the deepest, most vis-ceral, instinctual level. Keeping things as they are becomes a vitalpersonal imperative. In the administered society, “the coordinationof the individual with his society reaches into the very layers of themind where the very concepts are elaborated which are designedto comprehend the established reality” (1964, p. 104). Marcuse con-tended that “administered human beings today reproduce theirown repression and eschew a rupture with the given reality” (1978a,p. 71). Everything—needs, sensual experience, identity, emotions,all the subterranean dimensions of our being—serves the role ofcapital. The administered society turns “the entire human being—intelligence and senses—into an object of administration, gearedto produce and reproduce not only the goals but also the valuesand the promises of the system” (1972, p. 14). How is such deeprooted psychic and sensual control established?


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One-dimensional thought is the most pervasive mechanism ofcontrol. One-dimensional thought is instrumental thought focusedon how to make the current system work better and perform moreeffectively. When people think this way, they start to conceive ofthe range of possibilities open to them in life within a frameworkpredefined by the existing order. People assume that all is for thebest in society, that things are arranged the way they are for a goodreason, and that the current system works for the benefit of all. Inthis system, philosophical thought, even of an apparently criticalkind, serves only to keep the system going. Hence, “the philosophiccritique criticizes within the societal framework and stigmatizes non-positive actions as mere speculation, dreams or fantasies” (1964,p. 172). Problems of meaning and morality, such as how we shouldtreat other people, what it means to act ethically, or how we canmake sense of death, are defused of metaphysical dimensions andturned into operational difficulties to be addressed by techniquesand programs. Thus, “the operational and behavioral point of view,practiced as a ‘habit of thought’ at large, becomes the view of theestablished universe of discourse and action, needs and aspira-tions” (p. 15).

When adults learn to keep their thought fixed within familiarboundaries, the status quo is easily maintained. A universe of dis-course is created that is “populated by self-validating hypotheseswhich, incessantly and monopolistically repeated, become hypnoticdefinitions or dictations” (1964, p. 14). One-dimensional thoughtis circular even when it appears divergent. Any questions we askalways bring us back to the same point where we affirm the valid-ity of the current system. This kind of thought is endlessly repeti-tive, so that “self-validating, analytical propositions appear whichfunction like magic-ritual formulas” (p. 88). Its internal organiza-tion is so tight that “transgression of the discourse beyond theclosed analytical structure is incorrect or propaganda” (p. 88).Thought that protests the given order of things is effectively anaes-thetized by rejecting it as irrational or simply redefining it to fit theprevailing worldview.

Crucial to the successful maintenance of one-dimensionalthought is the creation of false needs. These are needs “which aresuperimposed upon the individual by particular social interests inhis repression: the needs which perpetuate evil, aggressiveness,


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misery and injustice. Their satisfaction . . . serves to arrest the devel-opment of his ability . . . to recognize the disease of the whole andgrasp the chance of curing the disease. The result is euphoria inunhappiness” (1964, p. 5). Examples of such needs are the need“to behave and consume in accordance with the advertisements,to love and hate what others love and hate” (p. 5), the need “forstupefying work” (p. 7), and “for modes of relaxation which sootheand prolong this stupefaction” (p. 7). As long as adults are “keptincapable of being autonomous, indoctrinated and manipulateddown to their very instincts” (p. 6), they are unable to recognizetheir own real needs in any meaningful sense. Any freedom ofchoice they experience is illusory, the deceptive liberty of “freecompetition at administered prices, a free press which censorsitself, free choice between brands and gadgets” (p. 7).

One-dimensional thought ensures its own continuance when ittrains people to feel a deep need to stay within their existing frame-works of analysis. Although avoiding divergent thinking seems likean individual decision, it is in reality a massive indoctrination effortintended to stop people questioning what they see around them.The purpose of this system-preserving effort is to ensure that “theneeds and the satisfactions that serve the preservation of the Estab-lishment are shared by the underlying population” (p. 8). Theapogee of the administered society is reached when everyone sharesthe same deep-seated need to preserve the existing social order, buteach believes this to be an idiosyncratic feature of their own per-sonality. Social control is assured if “the transplantation of socialinto individual needs is so effective that the difference betweenthem seems to be purely theoretical” (p. 8).

Language has an important place in one-dimensional thought.In fact, it is in language that the presence of such thought is most rec-ognizable. In the administered society, “the determining function ofthe social system of meaning asserts itself . . . in a much more covert,unconscious, emotional manner, in the ordinary universe of dis-course” (1964, p. 197). By the language we speak and the patterns ofthought we employ, we commit ourselves to maintaining the currentsystem. Marcuse’s eloquence on this point is worth quoting at length:

The established universe of discourse bears throughout the marks of the specific modes of domination, organization and


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manipulation to which the members of a society are subjected.People depend for their living on bosses and politicians and jobsand neighbors who make them speak and mean as they do. . . .Under these circumstances, the spoken phrase is an expression ofthe individual who speaks it, and of those who make him speak ashe does, and of whatever tension or contradiction may interrelatethem. In speaking their own language, people also speak the lan-guage of their masters, benefactors, advertisers. Thus they do notonly express themselves, their own knowledge, feelings, aspirations,but also something other than themselves” [1964, p. 193].

In Marcuse’s analysis there is little that is private or personalabout language. Language—the prime tool we use in the most pri-vate spheres of our lives to mediate and communicate reality—hasbeen ravaged by the consumer society. Thus, when “describing toeach other our loves and hatreds, sentiments and resentments, wemust use the terms of our advertisements, movies, politicians andbest sellers” (1964, p. 194). If this language is comprised of terms,metaphors, phrases, and sayings that confirm that all is for the best,then we are robbed of an important tool with which we can recordour indignation and inspire others to change the world. When theyare enclosed in language that focuses on tinkering with the systemto make it work more smoothly, “the people, previously the fer-ment of social change, have ‘moved up’ to become the ferment ofsocial cohesion” (1964, p. 256).

How does language function to cement one-dimensionalthought? First, the system establishes certain habits of communica-tion, patterns of talk, that close down the possibility of divergentthinking. This is the “authoritarian ritualization of discourse” (1964,p. 101) that trains people to mistake making pronouncements orsticking to the facts with the conduct of probing critical analysis. Lan-guage is imbued with a tone of certainty, and statements are utteredwith a self-evident correctness that allows “no time and no space fora discussion which would project disruptive alternatives” (p. 101).This kind of language is antithetical to dialog and discussion since“it pronounces and, by virtue of the power of the apparatus, estab-lishes facts—it is self-validating enunciation . . . it communicates deci-sion, dictum, command” (p. 101). Can a more accurate descriptionbe imagined of the claim of the Fox News Network to provide “fairand unbiased” coverage of the invasion of Iraq?


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More specifically, contemporary language kills abstract, con-ceptual thought by encouraging people to equate thinking with afocus only on specific, concrete, empirical concerns. To Marcuse,“the language which the man on the street actually speaks” offers“the token of a false concreteness” (1964, p. 174). It is a “purged lan-guage, purged . . . of the means for expressing any other contentsthan those furnished to the individuals by their society” (p. 174).These falsely concrete contents are an almost exclusive concern withmaking things work better, with perfecting and improving whateveris already in place. In adult education, for example, it is the languageof quality, of improved service, of ensuring that the programs we cre-ate meet as fully as possible the wants and needs (to Marcuse, falseneeds) that adult learners express.

An important component of false concreteness is the removal ofthe universal elements in conceptual thought. Concepts are, by defi-nition, universal ideas referring to abstractions under which variousparticulars are subsumed. Justice, love, fairness, compassion—all theseconcepts have meaning above and beyond their individual contextsand referents. When the abstract dimensions of these ideas areignored, it becomes very difficult to judge how we should act by ref-erence to some broader ideal. Whether a person or institution isbehaving justly becomes something we decide in a purely situationalway, possibly by comparing the behavior we’re examining to otherexamples within our personal horizons. The last thing we think ofdoing is invoking a broad, abstract notion of justice and applying it toour little local difficulties. This is how “the methodological translationof the universal into the operational then becomes repressive reduc-tion of thought” (1964, p. 108). For example, the public discussion ofthe morality of invading a country can quickly become obscured by afocus on situational imperatives such as the number of troopsdeployed from week to week, the exact civilian and military bodycount, and the amount of money spent supporting the war effort.

When abstract conceptual thought is purged from everyday lan-guage, two consequences ensue. First, it becomes increasingly dif-ficult for people to conceive of radical alternatives. A narrow focuson false concreteness inhibits the breadth of imaginative thoughtnecessary to create alternative possibilities. Second, without abstractconcepts it becomes very difficult to generate radical, external cri-teria that can be applied to judge the conduct of everyday affairs.


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In the absence of abstract concepts, “the criteria for judging a givenstate of affairs are those offered by . . . imposed by, the given stateof affairs. The analysis is ‘locked,’ the range of judgment is con-firmed within a context . . . in which their meaning, function, anddevelopment are determined” (1964, p. 115). So the prevention ofabstract, conceptual thought and the promotion of false concrete-ness are important ways that education, including adult education,contributes to keeping things as they are. In Marcuse’s terms, “lan-guage controls by reducing the linguistic forms and symbols ofreflection, abstraction, development, contradiction; by substitutingimages for concepts” (1964, p. 103).

The picture Marcuse paints in One Dimensional Man of theadministered society dominated by technology, consumerism,restricted language, and falsely concrete thought processes that onlyconfirm the correctness of the existing order seems dismal indeed.In his view scientific management and rational production meth-ods might have improved people’s standards of living, but they havedone so at a price—the destruction of nature and diminution ofthe soul—that people are not so much willing to pay as completelyoblivious to. The adult educator Myles Horton echoed Marcuse inhis belief that the all-encompassing nature of technology meant“man is grown into this all-encompassing machine and made amechanistic device” (Horton, 2003, p. 222). Like Horton, Marcuse’sanalysis stresses the costs of technological envelopment. The admin-istered society has extended its tentacles into the deepest recessesof the psyche to produce “the thorough assimilation of mind withfacts, of thought with required behavior, of aspirations with reality”(Marcuse, 1964, p. 252). But documenting the ways in which thelogic of domination infused language, thought, and sensibility wasonly one part of Marcuse’s work. We need now to turn to anotherelement of particular concern to adult educators: the possibility ofpeople learning how to liberate themselves from the discourse,logic, and practice of domination.

Pathways to LiberationOne reason why Marcuse had such an influence in his time was be-cause he offered a way out of the prospect of a society lulled intorepressive consumerism by the delights of affluence. Even those such


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as Habermas (1983) who viewed his theoretical work as “somewhatmeager” acknowledged that “as always, the discourse is affirmative”(p. 171). Marcuse was a philosopher of hope as well as a chroniclerof domination. He believed that “today there are tendencies in soci-ety—anarchically unorganized, spontaneous tendencies—that her-ald a total break with the dominant needs of repressive society”(Marcuse, 1970, p. 69). So while he documented oppression, he alsoexplored social, educational, and cultural pathways to liberation.Even in a one-dimensional society he acknowledged that “there arestill gaps and interstices in which heretical methods can be practicedwithout meaningless sacrifice, and still help the cause” (p. 76).

Some of the gaps, interstices, and pathways he explores con-tribute a new dimension to a critical theory of adult learning, em-phasizing as they do aspects of learning—inwardness, isolation,memory, distance, and subjectivity—that usually receive little atten-tion. For Marcuse social living in an administered society is domi-nated living. In the pressure to conform to common expectations,the chance for individual thought is lost. The only way people cancome to a truly critical perspective is by distancing themselves insome manner from the stupefying influence of commonsense waysof thinking, feeling, and speaking. Isolation and separation—theconditions of true autonomy—are potentially revolutionary, the pre-cursors to a commitment to social change.

The Revolutionary Significance of Distance and PrivacyThe themes of autonomous learning and thinking are familiarwithin adult education, particularly in the discourse surroundingself-directed learning. The explosion of self-paced, online learningis often linked to the idea of the adult learner’s autonomous ex-ercise of control over how and when she learns. But the politicaldimensions to self-direction, and by implication to autonomy, have,with a couple of exceptions (Hammond and Collins, 1991; Brook-field, 2000), been ignored. To Marcuse, however, autonomousthought is a necessary condition for the development of any kindof social movement intended to resist domination. But because oftechnological domination and the consumerist manipulation ofneeds, “independence of thought, autonomy and the right to polit-ical opposition are being deprived of their basic critical function”


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(1964, p. 1). The growth in automaton conformity (to use Fromm’sterm from the previous chapter) can only be reversed or challengedby the development of independent thought; “intellectual freedomwould mean the restoration of individual thought now absorbed bymass communication and indoctrination” (p. 4).

In an era of total domination, how can true autonomy be real-ized? Here Marcuse turns to the liberating power of art, an avenuefor social change well known to cultural workers in popular edu-cation through the theater of the oppressed, street art, commu-nity murals and video, independent film, rock and roll, punk, folk,hip-hop, and rap music. But it is not this kind of overtly political“people’s” art that interests Marcuse. To him true autonomy—separation from the contaminating influences of conformity andconsumerism—arises out of the individual’s opportunity to ab-stract herself from the day-to-day reality of the surrounding cul-ture. For an altered consciousness to develop, it is necessary forthe adult to experience a fundamental estrangement from com-monly accepted ways of thinking and feeling. Immersion in artis-tic experience is one way to induce this estrangement. Contactwith certain artistic forms offers a pathway of separation, a way ofbreaking with the rhythms of normal life. This focus on inward-ness, on subjectivity, as liberating is very much at odds with howcontemporary activists think of the political function of art. Pri-vacy, isolation, and inwardness have become suspicious ideas, indi-cating an irresponsible withdrawal from political commitment.How, then, can Marcuse regard them as liberating?

The answer lies in Marcuse’s belief that domination is so totalin this society that group creativity, collaborative artistic work, teamproductions, and other forms of collective activity have all beensuffused with the dominant culture’s belief that such activity shouldbe directed toward making the system work better. When peopleget together, they do so to support, rather than challenge, the sys-tem. Each person’s belief in the basic efficacy of the way society isorganized is reinforced by contact with others in the society. Soremoving ourselves from the influence of others is a revolutionaryact, a step into, rather than a retreat from, the real world.

In his analysis of liberating subjectivity, Marcuse stresses threethings—memory, distance, and privacy. Memory is subversive because it signifies a temporary break with the current reality;


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“remembrance is a mode of dissociation from the given facts, amode of ‘mediation’ which breaks, for short moments, theomnipresent power of the given facts. Memory recalls the terrorand the hope that passed” (1964, p. 98). When we remember daysof childhood bliss when the world seemed benign and beautiful,or when we remember our first cruel realization that life is unfair,we reencounter a source of primal energy. Instead of being pleas-ant reverie, memory is here seen as a route out of the usual way ofexperiencing everyday life and hence a source of the estrangementMarcuse feels is crucial to developing revolutionary consciousness.In his view the distance from daily existence that memory some-times provides is key to the development of all forms independent,critical thought. The further we get from the quotidian, the betterchance we have of breaking out of domination. As a general rule,“it is the sphere farthest removed from the concreteness of societywhich may show most clearly the extent of the conquest of thoughtby society” (1964, p. 104).

When we live our lives in association with others, it becomes dif-ficult to establish the necessary distance for autonomous thought.In all areas of our lives we are subject to “aggressive and exploitativesocialization” (1978a, p. 5) that forces us into constant associationwith those who believe things are working just fine. For example,the contemporary emphasis on collaboration and teamwork, onbeing one of the team, on a successful marriage as comprising twopeople who make a good team (a bête noire of Fromm’s) has“invaded the inner space of privacy and practically eliminated thepossibility of that isolation in which the individual, thrown back onhimself alone, can think and question and find” (1964, p. 244). Tohim, privacy is “the sole condition that, on the basis of satisfied vitalneeds, can give meaning to freedom and independence of thought”(p. 244). It is no accident, therefore, that for most people privacy“has long since become the most expensive commodity, availableonly to the very rich” (p. 244).

Marcuse’s lamentation of the passing of privacy, and his stresson the revolutionary power of detachment and isolation, sits uneasilyalongside the belief held by many adult educators that learning (par-ticularly critical learning) is inherently social. I have argued (Brook-field, 1995) that introspective analysis of a private and isolated sortleads us into perceptual dead ends. To me critical reflection is a


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social learning process in which we depend on others to be criticalmirrors reflecting back to us aspects of our assumptive clusters weare unable to see. I have also (like many others) urged that trueadult education is collaborative and collective, the building of alearning community in which the roles of teachers and learners areblurred. In my own practice, the three doctoral programs in which Ihave been involved as worker or cocreator (at Teachers College,National Louis University, and the University of St. Thomas) haveall insisted on collaborative work as the norm, even to the extent ofencouraging collaboratively written doctoral dissertations. I have feltthat this cocreation of knowledge mirrored best practices in the fieldas seen in Freireian culture circles, the Highlander Folk School,social movements, and participatory research. For me isolation isusually a step backward, a retreat into the divisive, competitive, pri-vatized creation of knowledge characteristic of capitalism. How onearth can privacy and isolation challenge the social order?

To Marcuse, my question is asinine. I should be asking instead,“How can we possibly challenge the social order without experi-encing first the separation that isolation provides?” For example,experiencing art communally at a gallery, theater, poetry reading,or concert is, he argues, inherently conservative. Our responses tothe art concerned are preconditioned by our awareness of the pres-ence of others. But when a person experiences a deeply personal,completely private reaction to a work of art, she “steps out of thenetwork of exchange relationships and exchange values, withdrawsfrom the reality of bourgeois society, and enters another dimen-sion of existence” (1978a, p. 4). This is the dimension of in-wardness, of liberating subjectivity. Such subjectivity is liberatingbecause we are moved by primal aesthetic and creative impulses,not the dictates of majority opinion or commonsense criteria ofbeauty. Privacy, inwardness, and isolation are all revolutionarybecause they play the role of “shifting the locus of the individual’srealization from the domain of the performance principle and theprofit motive to that of the inner resources of the human being:passion, imagination, conscience” (1978a, p. 5).

According to this logic, a truly critical practice of adult educa-tion would be concerned not just with locating itself within existingsocial movements. It would also be seeking to create opportunitiesfor people to experience the privacy and isolation they need for


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memory, introspection, and meditation to trigger a rupture withpresent day experience. This rupture is not just a sort of spiritualawakening but an experiential dissonance that will jerk people intoan awareness of how life could be different. Only with distance andprivacy can a new sensibility develop that “would repel the instru-mentalist rationality of capitalism” (1972, p. 64).

Marcuse believed that at the root of all striving for freedom isthe need to emancipate the senses. Feeling, touch, sight, smell, andsound all contain sensuously uncontrollable qualities that standagainst bureaucratic rationality. If adults are to be truly liberated,they need to be free at “the roots of social relationships . . . whereindividuals most directly and profoundly experience their worldand themselves: in their sensibility, in their instinctual needs” (1972,p. 62). Marcuse grounds his emphasis on liberating sensibility inMarx’s call in the Education and Philosophic Manuscripts (1961) forthe complete emancipation of all human senses and qualities. Incontrast to contemporary critical theorists who are skeptical of afocus on personal change, Marcuse is quite willing to stress thatsocial change must be located in the individual’s altered sensibil-ity; “it is this primary experience itself which must change radicallyif social change is to be radical, qualitative change” (1972, p. 62). Anew sensibility is “the vehicle for radical construction, for new waysof life. It has become a force in the political struggle for liberation”(p. 72).

Of course, altered individual sensibilities acting alone will not acti-vate change; they need to be united in building a new society. Thereis “no individual liberation without the liberation of society” (p. 48),and individual acts of transgression “must incorporate the universalin the particular protest” (p. 49). Hence, nurturing the new sen-sibility is only the beginning of transformation; “the individualemancipation of the senses is supposed to be the beginning, eventhe foundation, of universal liberation, the free society is to takeroot in instinctual needs” (p. 72). But, equally, skipping individualconsciousness and concerning oneself solely with the mechanicsof collective action, is to leave out one half of the transformativeequation. Altered social and economic arrangements will not freepeople unless there are corresponding alterations at the level ofinstinctual sensibilities. For Marcuse, “the individuals themselvesmust change in their very instincts and sensibilities if they are to


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build, in association, a qualitatively different society” (p. 74). This con-tention has important implications for formal programs of adult edu-cation, particularly those that emphasize changing the individual’ssensibility through aesthetic immersion.

The Revolutionary Potential of ArtIf there is any truth to Marcuse’s argument regarding the power ofaesthetic immersion to trigger a revolutionary estrangement fromeveryday experience, then adult education that concerns itself withliberating the senses through creative, artistic expression is poten-tially revolutionary. This is a switch for many critical adult educa-tors who may be tempted to dismiss this kind of practice as elitistdilettantism. Recreational art or music appreciation is about as faras you can get from critical theory for many on the left who find ithard to think of these classes as potential crucibles for the devel-opment of revolutionary consciousness. But Marcuse’s analysischallenges us to reverse our dismissal of aesthetic education as anirrelevant indulgence of middle-class, leisured learners. The keypoint, though, is that for liberal adult education to instigate a rup-ture with everyday experience, its programs would have to focuson fostering the isolation necessary for an immersion in aesthet-ics. Music or art appreciation would not be taught collectively as agroup process in which people were introduced to the canon overa period of several weeks. Instead, the adult learner would receiveminimal initiation into the criteria for judging artistic power andmaximal immersion in an extended private engagement with art.

This still seems like a politically correct rationalization for theelitist enjoyment of an elitist individualized program of artisticstudy, and commentators such as Reitz (2000) have criticizedMarcuse for what they see as the “ironically conservative politicalovertones” (p. 43) present in his work. To understand its politicalimport, we need to examine Marcuse’s contention that individualartistic experience represents rebellious, liberating subjectivity.Again and again he asserts that “the flight into ‘inwardness’ andthe insistence on a private sphere may well serve as bulwarksagainst a society which administers all dimensions of human exis-tence” (1978a, p. 38). Because they instigate a separation from theroutinized, unthinking life, “inwardness and subjectivity may well


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become the inner and outer space for the subversion of experi-ence, for the emergence of another universe” (p. 38). It is the tast-ing of a new form of experience that is inherently revolutionary,and the power to initiate this is “the critical, negating function ofart” (1978a, p. 7). Art can induce “the transcendence of immedi-ate reality” which “shatters the reified objectivity of establishedsocial relations and opens a new dimension of experience: rebirthof the rebellious subjectivity” (p. 7).

Marcuse is careful to recognize that “art cannot change theworld” (1978a, p. 32) though he does believe that “it can con-tribute to changing the consciousness and drives of the men andwomen who could change the world” (p. 32). Art represents only“the promise of liberation” (1978a, p. 46) not its actuality, and“clearly, the fulfillment of this promise is not within the domain ofart” (p. 46). What art does offer us, however, is a chance of break-ing with the familiar, of inducing in us an awareness of other waysof being in the world. Art “opens the established reality to anotherdimension; that of possible liberation” (1972, p. 87). If radicalpolitical practice is focused on creating “a world different from andcontrary to the established universe of discourse and behavior”(1969, p. 73), then art is one important prompt to this state of dif-ference. What exists now for most people is a condition of volun-tary servitude. Working to create a free society therefore “involvesa break with the familiar, the routine ways of seeing, hearing, feel-ing, understanding things so that the organism may become recep-tive to the potential forms of a non aggressive, non exploitativeworld” (1969, p. 6). The political significance of art is that it helpsus make this break with the ordinary. It helps us “find forms ofcommunication that may break the aggressive rule of the estab-lished language and images over the mind and body of man—language and images which have long since become a means ofdomination, indoctrination, and deception” (1972, p. 79).

Art, then, gives us new forms of visual and spoken language andopens us to new ways of sensing and feeling. Learning these differentforms of communication and perception is, for Marcuse, theinevitable precursor to social action. Adult education that focuses ondeveloping artistic sensibility is regarded as full of revolutionary poten-tial as Freireian culture circles, theater of the oppressed, participatoryresearch, or education for party activism. This is why Marcuse felt that


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the development of the aesthetic dimension of life was as much partof political struggle as the democratizing of decision making, rejec-tion of consumer culture, or the abolition of the exchange economy.A liberated society “presupposes a type of man with a different sen-sitivity” (1969, p. 21) possessing different language, gestures, andimpulses and “guided by the imagination, mediating between therational faculties and the sensuous needs” (p. 30).

For Marcuse, then, aesthetics is politics and adults who learn anew aesthetic sensibility are learning a new form of political con-sciousness. Indeed, learning a new sensibility is so crucial to liber-ating humanity that we can gauge the progress we are making in arevolution by reference to aesthetic as much as political or eco-nomic criteria. Hence, “the aesthetic dimension can serve as a sortof gauge for a free society” (1969, p. 27) with the demand for quietand beauty “cleaning the earth from [sic] the very material garbageproduced by the spirit of capitalism” (p. 28). Again, Marcuse iscareful to specify that this sensibility must be thought of as a deeplypersonal phenomenon. He is not afraid to focus on the individualand does not regard this focus as apolitical or ignoring wider socialand economic forces. Developing a new sensibility can only hap-pen when the individual has privacy and distance from quotidianreality. People “require a degree of emancipation from immediateexperience, of ‘privacy’” (1972, p. 102) if they are to comprehend“the extreme aesthetic qualities of art” (p. 102).

As discussed earlier, the political power of art is not to be foundin directly political images of revolution, struggle, and socialist vic-tory. Marcuse declares that “art cannot represent the revolution”(1972, p. 103) since it “obeys a necessity, and has a freedom whichis its own—not those of the revolution” (p. 105). It is the rigidlystylized aspects of art, the way it adheres to a set of strict constraintsthat are wholly aesthetic, that is truly emancipatory. If art is “topierce and comprehend the everyday reality, it must be subjugatedto aesthetic stylization” (1978a, p. 122), to the tyranny of form. Thissounds contradictory, for how can adhering to stylized artistic con-ventions liberate us? But Marcuse is very insistent on this point.Repeatedly he stresses how ”the political potential of art lies onlyin its own aesthetic dimension” (1978a, p. xi) and how “the criti-cal function of art, its contribution to the struggle for liberation,resides in the aesthetic form” (1978a, p. 8). The aesthetic form in


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painting, sculpture, music, drama, and poetry “reveals tabooed andrepressed dimensions of reality” (p. 9) by conjuring up different“modes of perception, imagination, gestures—a feast of sensuous-ness which shatters everyday experience and anticipates a differ-ent reality principle” (1978a, p. 19).

When we submit to the aesthetic power of a work of art, we im-merse ourselves in an experience in which different rules are pres-ent. There is a tyranny of form and structure present, “a necessitywhich demands that no line, no sound could be replaced” (1978a,p. 42). Because the rules of creative and artistic necessity are radi-cally different from those governing social and economic necessity,works of art that adhere to aesthetic rules induce an estrangementfrom contemporary life. In this way “art breaks open a dimensioninaccessible to other experiences, a dimension in which humanbeings, nature, and things no longer stand under the law of the es-tablished reality principle” (1978a, p. 72). The rules that make foreffective art (effectiveness being defined as the capacity to inducean altered consciousness) are quite separate from the rules thatmake for effective adult education practice, to take one example.Art “has its own language and illuminates reality only through thisother language” (p. 22).

Although he does not draw explicitly on Marcuse, Newman’s(1999) provocative meditation on images of adult learning con-tains several examples of how immersion in the different languageof artistic experience is inherently emancipatory. Describing theactivities of Australian surfers, he notices how the different gram-mar of surfing—“sensing the currents, noting their distance fromthe rocks, maintaining their balance on a narrow piece of fibre-glass, watching the water for unwelcome shadows” (p. 92)—induces an altered sense of reality. Referring to the intenseconcentration surfing induces, Newman declares that “this formof focused reverie can result in profound personal and politicalchange” (p. 92).

Later in his book he describes attending a production ofShakespeare’s The Tempest, with Patrick Stewart (better known asCaptain Jean Luc Picard in TV’s Star Trek: The Next Generation) asProspero. Newman writes that “Prospero uses conflict openly togenerate learning and promote change” (p. 175) and sees him as“an eccentric and passionate learner and educator, driven by anger


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at injustice, a belief that the world could be a better place, and areadiness, given the opportunity, to intervene in order to shift peo-ple towards his view of the world” (p. 175). In Marcuse’s terms,Prospero, like other dramatic protagonists, restructures our viewof life “through concentration, exaggeration, emphasis on the es-sential, reordering of facts” (Marcuse, 1978a, p. 45) and other dra-matic devices. In the hands of Shakespeare, Prospero, and PatrickStewart, “the aesthetic transformation turns into an indictment—but also into a celebration of that which resists injustice and terror,and of that which can still be saved” (p. 45).

In contemplating artistic forms, Marcuse believes we catchglimpses of other realities, of what our world could be like if tech-nological, social, and economic domination were removed. Butthese glimpses can only be apprehended through deliberatelyunreal artistic depictions. In a world in which the injunction to “getreal” means to adapt yourself to the brutal reality of everyday life,the unreal expresses people’s yearnings for a different world. ToMarcuse, “the world of a work of art is ‘unreal’ in the ordinarysense of this word; it is a fictitious reality” (1978a, p. 54). However,in its fictitious or illusory form, art “contains more truth than doeseveryday reality . . . only in the illusory world do things appear aswhat they are and what they can be” (p. 54).

This is because what we name as reality is actually a state of servi-tude, a way of living in which the needs we feel, and the satisfactionswe enjoy, are essentially false. If, on the one hand, capitalism pro-duces deception, illusion, and mystification, then “art, on the otherhand, does not conceal that which is—it reveals” (1978a, p. 56).When artistic immersion induces an intense engagement with thestylized representation of a painting, play, or poem, we are nudgedtoward a perception of life as “more as well as qualitatively ‘other’than the established reality” (p. 56). From this perspective it is art thatnow holds empirical truth and “it is the given reality, the ordinaryworld which now appears as untrue, as false, as deceptive reality”(p. 56). When a play, song, or film draws us into a stylized “other”universe, we experience an estranged state of being in which we areliberated from the so-called reality of daily life; “the intensificationof perception can go as far as to distort things so that the unspeak-able is spoken, the otherwise invisible becomes visible, and theunbearable explodes” (1978a, p. 45).


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Who produces art of such stylized intensity? Is it those who ded-icate their life to socialist transformation? Not according to Mar-cuse. Those with no political consciousness can create just aspowerful images of revolutionary other-worldness as lifelong revo-lutionaries. We cannot assume that working-class or minority artistsproduce art of greater revolutionary power than do the Whitebourgeoisie. In Marcuse’s view, “the progressive character of art,its contribution to the struggle for liberation, cannot be measuredby the artists’ origins nor by the ideological horizon of their class”(1978a, p. 19). Whether or not art is progressive is determined bycriteria intrinsic to the work itself, not by the artist’s birthplace.Famously, Marcuse declared that “Marxist theory is not familyresearch” (p. 19). The revolutionary significance of art lies solelyin its transcendent power; “the radical qualities of art . . . aregrounded precisely in the dimensions where art transcends its socialdetermination and emancipates itself from the given universe ofdiscourse and behavior while observing its overwhelming pres-ence” (1978a, p. 6).

When Negativity Becomes Positive:Adult Education for Critical ThinkingIf we live in a society in which thought is circumscribed within cer-tain limits that justify the correctness of the existing order, then crit-ical thought must by definition exist outside of and in oppositionto these limits. This is Marcuse’s position on what it means to be acritical thinker, and it is very far from the kind of positive cheer-leading for critical thinking as a productive activity that I, amongstothers, have written about (Brookfield, 1987a). Just as rebellioussubjectivity can only develop at a distance from everyday experi-ence, so critical thinking is distanced from the false concretenessof everyday reasoning. In his view, “an irreducible difference existsbetween the universe of everyday thinking and language on the oneside, and that of philosophic thinking and language on the other”(1964, p. 178). The latter is conceptual in nature and deals withuniversals. Thus, “critical philosophic thought is necessarily tran-scendent and abstract” based on a “dissociation from the materialpractice” (p. 134) of everyday life. Critical thinking in this view,therefore, is inherently philosophical and conceptual.


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In stressing the universal, conceptual elements of critical think-ing, Marcuse is at odds with those adult educators like myself whohave emphasized that the road to criticality begins with examiningthe specific experiences of adult learners. He challenges us torethink our dismissal of conceptual analysis as an irrelevant gameplayed only by ivory tower academics distanced from revolutionarystruggle. In his view the anti-intellectual mistrust of theorizing “serveswell the interests of the powers that be” (Marcuse, 1978b, p. 63).Marcuse views it as a tactical mistake for adult educators to focus onlyon communicating with learners through colloquial, street languagein an effort to create a personal connection. In a dominated, admin-istered society, street language—the metaphors, slang, and expres-sions of everyday life—is by definition falsely concrete. Dailylanguage is imbued with the belief that we must always apply thoughtto making the existing system work more smoothly. It diverts peoplefrom considering the possibility of radically different ways of think-ing and living. By this logic, abstract conceptual thought is inher-ently critical and critical thought is inherently abstract.

Not only does critical thinking operate at a necessary level ofabstractness, it is also negative. As articulated by three of Marcuse’sstudents, “negative thinking is first and foremost critical thinking”(Leiss, Ober, and Sherover, 1967, p. 424) because it “opposes theself-contentment of common sense which is so ready to embracethe given and to accept the established fact” (p. 424). Critical think-ing focuses on what’s wrong with what currently exists, on illumi-nating omissions, distortions, and falsities in current thinking. InNewman’s (1994) terms, critical thinking is about laying blame. Anegative appraisal of “commonsense” reasoning (such as the rea-soning informing justifications for invading other countries) is thefirst step in developing a framework for the kind of thought thatcould replace what now exists. So what in the short term seemsnegative is in the long term positive. Marcuse argues that beforewe have the great liberation and the creation of what could be, weneed the great refusal, the rejection of what is. Those participat-ing in the great refusal “reject the rules of the game that is riggedagainst them, the ancient strategy of patience and persuasion, thereliance on the Good Will in the Establishment, its false and im-moral comforts, its cruel affluence” (1969, p. 6). Saying “no” to aculture of domination is a positive act.


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What kind of adult education can prepare adults to think crit-ically in this necessarily negative manner? First and foremost it willbe a conceptually based adult education. Marcuse is certainly veryready to give all kinds of strategic advice on direct political action,but he never left behind his fundamental conviction that learningto think conceptually was as much part of the revolution as creat-ing new political and economic structures. In the administeredsociety of dominated thought, any kind of conceptual abstract rea-soning is by definition critical. Hence, a fundamental task of adulteducation is to “provide the student with the conceptual instru-ments for a solid and thorough critique of the material and intel-lectual culture” (1969, p. 61).

As with his emphasis on the importance of isolation and privacyin the development of rebellious subjectivity, Marcuse’s insistenceon adults learning to think conceptually challenges practices lion-ized in adult education. In particular, his position seems to standagainst the celebratory aspects of experiential learning. But if weaccept the contention that most people’s experiences are falsely con-crete, then celebrating and dignifying them—even integrating themdirectly into the curriculum—only serves to legitimize the existingsociety. Experiential learning would have meaning for Marcuse onlyif it focused on deconstructing experiences and showing their one-dimensional nature and if it avoided the uncritical celebration ofpeople’s stories. From his perspective experiential learning wouldbe learning to recognize how the ways we perceive and constructexperience have been colonized by the dominant language of con-sumerism.

Marcuse also seems to question the wisdom of “starting wherethe students are,” long a prized tenet of the progressive canon. Ifwhere the students are is living a falsely concrete existence, then weneed to get as far away from where they are as is possible, chiefly byinsisting on conceptual analysis. The struggle to think conceptuallyis always a political struggle to Marcuse, not just a matter of intel-lectual development. Politics and cognitive movement are partnershere in the development of revolutionary consciousness.

An important part of conceptual learning for Marcuse is thedevelopment of a new language. Although he rejects the ritualizedinvocation of Marxist jargon, he still feels that an important educa-tional task is “the effort to free words (and thereby concepts) from


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the all but total distortion of their meanings by the Establishment”(1969, p. 8). Developing new language is crucial if people are tolearn to recognize their servitude and expose the comfortable con-sumerism to which they are enslaved. Language operates at thedeepest levels of thought to frame the concepts adults use to nameand interpret their experiences, and its control by the managers ofthe administered society effectively prevents any revolutionary aware-ness from emerging. Oppositional movements need “a language thatreaches a population which has introjected the needs and values oftheir masters and managers and made them their own, thus repro-ducing the established system in their minds, their consciousness,their senses and instincts” (1972, p. 80).

Consequently, the study of linguistics, as well as an immersion inthe stylizations of art, could be understood as an important part ofpolitical adult education. When adults start to realize how languageis socially formed and learned, they take a big step toward becom-ing politically literate (a theme Paulo Freire explored in his life andwork). The creation of a new language is also an important momentof transition in a political movement; “if the radical opposition devel-ops its own language, it protests spontaneously, subconsciously,against one of the most effective ‘secret weapons’ of domination anddefamation” (1969, p. 74).

What does Marcuse think would be the features of an adulteducational practice that developed the capacity for negative crit-ical thinking and that encouraged rebuilding a language of liber-ation? For one thing there would be a clear distinction betweenadult educators and adult learners. Marcuse departs somewhatfrom the andragogical and collaborative traditions in the field toemphasize that adult educators cannot be as one with adult learn-ers and that adults cannot liberate themselves without participat-ing in formally planned programs of adult education. For him,“self-liberation is self-education but as such it presupposes educa-tion by others” (1972, p. 47). This is because society is organizedto keep people away from disturbing ideas and to promote a stateof happy stupefaction. Those lucky enough to have access to revo-lutionary knowledge and information “have a commitment to usetheir knowledge to help men and women realize and enjoy theirtruly human capabilities” (p. 47).


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A program of adult education designed to reverse years of in-duced stupefaction would need to be highly organized and staffedby well-trained activists. Those who reach adulthood with littlecapacity for conceptual thought, and without access to a languageuntainted by metaphors and connotations of domination, will nothave their sensibilities changed or imaginations awakened by a fewworkshops or courses. One class cannot undo a lifetime’s ideolog-ical acculturation. Instead “the intensive indoctrination and man-agement of the people call for an intensive counter-education andorganization” (1972, p. 47). Those in charge of programs of coun-terindoctrination will be exercising leadership that is “educatedand tested in the theory and practice of radical opposition” (p. 47).This kind of leadership will not be exercised in formal classroomsbut within existing and nascent social movements. Here we seeMarcuse at one with adult education activists and theorists such asHorton and Freire (1990) who see adult educators working withincommunities and social movements to help those adults involvedlearn skills of organization, advocacy, and tactical planning. ToMarcuse, “the function of this leadership is to ‘translate’ sponta-neous protest into organized action” (1972, p. 47).

There is also a role for adult educators to work as developersof consciousness. Marcuse does not believe that intellectuals whoare not drawn from the working class are necessarily compromised.He acknowledges that leftist, middle-class intellectuals can form“catalyst groups” who “because of the privilege of their educationand training—develop their intelligence, their theory, largelyremote from the material process of production” (Marcuse, 1978b,p. 72). Once again isolation, separation, and distance are seen asconstituting a form of revolutionary privacy. Although not a sub-stitute for working-class activism, leftist middle-class intellectualshave as their main task “the development of consciousness—tryingto counteract the management and control of consciousness by theestablished power structure” (p. 72).

Education as the Practice of Liberating ToleranceAs a practicing educator, Marcuse often returns to the dynamics ofteaching and learning, particularly the tendency to embrace di-verse curricular perspectives in the name of democracy. In one of


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the essays that is most unsettling to adult education, he argues thatan all-embracing tolerance of diverse views always ends up legiti-mizing an unfair status quo. Marcuse’s students observe that intheir observation of him it became clear that “the essential elementof Marcuse’s teaching is that knowledge is partisan” (Leiss, Ober,and Sherover, 1967, p. 425). In their judgment he repeatedly em-phasized “the role of the philosopher in challenging the beliefsand assumptions of ordinary life and indeed in abolishing the en-tire structure of established existence” (p. 425). This was done ina serious but not solemn way; “in informal lectures and informaldiscussions his teaching is generally spiced with irony and humordirected at the sacred cows of the Establishment . . . a characteris-tic of those who are truly serious” (p. 425).

Marcuse’s explicit partisanship is at odds with contemporaryhumanistic adult education sensibilities which emphasize the facil-itator presenting students with an array of viewpoints and lettingthem make up their own minds. Marcuse’s charismatic presencewas also at odds with adult education’s dislike of the cult of the per-sonality. Angela Davis describes how “when Marcuse walked ontothe platform, situated at the lowest level of the hall, his presencedominated everything. There was something imposing about himwhich evoked total silence and attention when he appeared, with-out his having to pronounce a single word. The students had a rarerespect for him” (Davis, 1974, p. 134). The seriousness, even solem-nity of his presence, seems light years away from the kind of dia-logic interplay urged on adult educators by luminaries such asLindeman, Freire, and Horton.

Marcuse certainly thought of education as a serious activity. Tohim “the struggle for a free and critical education becomes a vitalpart in the larger struggle for change” (1969, p. 61). He quotes theGerman activist Rudi Dutschke’s idea of a long march through insti-tutions, of activists “working against the established institutions whileworking in them” (1972, p. 55). Learning is central to this march aschange agents learn how to program computers, to develop sociallycritical instructional materials that connect with learners of differ-ent levels, and to use the mass media as educational tools. Some-times these agents are able to establish alternative educationalsystems—open schools, free universities, and so on. At other times


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they work within existing schools and colleges to help students rec-ognize technological domination and its reproduction.

One of the chief inhibitors to developing this recognition inlearners is teachers’ willingness to run discussions and develop cur-ricula in which a variety of perspectives are present. On the face ofit, this hardly seems like a problem. Indeed, a broadening of curric-ulum to include radical ideas seems an important and obvious partof building a critical practice of adult education. In one of his mostfamous essays, however, Marcuse (1965a) argues that such toler-ance is often repressive, not liberating. The central thesis of hisessay—that “what is proclaimed and practiced as tolerance today,is in many of its most effective manifestations serving the cause ofoppression” (p. 81)—extends the concept of hegemony and hasimportant implications for the practice of adult education. Whenthey experience repressive tolerance, adults mistakenly believe theylive in an open society characterized by freedom of speech andexpression. In such a society, adult learners assume they can freelychoose to plan and conduct learning projects that spring fromtheir innermost desires.

Repressive tolerance is the tolerance, in the name of imparti-ality, fairness, or even-handedness, of intolerable ideologies andpractices, and the consequent marginalization of efforts for demo-cratic social change. It is also a tolerance for just enough challengeto the system to convince people that they live in a truly open soci-ety, while still maintaining structural inequity. This tolerance ofchallenge and diversity functions as a kind of pressure cooker let-ting off enough steam to prevent the whole pot from boiling over.When repressive tolerance is in place, the apparent acceptance ofall viewpoints only serves to reinforce an unfair status quo. This isbecause “tolerance is extended to policies, conditions and modesof behavior which should not be tolerated because they are imped-ing, if not destroying, the chances of creating an existence withoutfear and misery” (p. 82).

In a society in which a small number of people hold a dispro-portionate amount of wealth and power, and in which ideologicalobfuscation ensures the reproduction of the system, tolerance onlyserves to reinforce the status quo. In Marcuse’s words, “The condi-tions of tolerance are ‘loaded’ . . . determined and defined by theinstitutionalized inequality . . . i.e. by the class structure of society”


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(p. 85). When “false consciousness has become the general con-sciousness” (p. 110), tolerance ensures that alternative, opposi-tional perspectives are rendered ineffectual. When we have a“passive toleration of entrenched and established attitudes andideas even if their damaging effect on man and nature is evident”(p. 85), then the apparently benign “ideology of tolerance . . . inreality, favors and fortifies the conservation of the status quo ofinequality and discrimination” (p. 123).

How does repressive tolerance work? Essentially, repressive tol-erance is hegemonic, a taken for granted notion embedded in theideology of democracy. Corporations and media perpetuate theidea of tolerance as democratic fairness, thereby creating a socialmentality which accepts that things are organized for the good ofall. But what counts as truth is predefined by these institutions sothat avenues of opposition are subtly closed off. Marcuse argues that“under the rule of monopolistic media—themselves mere instru-ments of economic and political power—a mentality is created forwhich right and wrong, true and false are predefined wherever theyaffect the vital interests of the society” (p. 95). Language—in con-temporary terms, discursive practices and relations—is controlledto maintain oppression; “the meaning of words is rigidly stabilized. . . the avenues of entrance are closed to the meaning of words andideas other than the established one” (p. 96).

Repressive tolerance masks its repression behind the façade ofopen even-handedness. Alternative ideas are not banned. Criticaltexts are published and critical messages circulated. The defendersof the status quo can point to the existence of dissenting voices (suchas Marcuse’s) as evidence of the open society we inhabit and theactive tolerance of a wide spectrum of ideologies. But the framingof meaning accomplished by hegemony is all. Sometimes the mean-ing of radical texts is diluted by the fact the texts themselves are hardto get or incredibly expensive. More likely the radical meanings areneutered because they are framed as the expressions of an obviouslyweird minority opinion. As Marcuse writes, “Other words can be spo-ken and heard, other ideas can be expressed, but, at the massivescale of the conservative majority . . . they are immediately ‘evalu-ated’ (i.e. automatically understood) in terms of the public lan-guage—a language which determined ‘a priori’ the direction inwhich the thought process moves. Thus the process of reflection


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ends where it started: in the given conditions and relations” (p. 96).Like Fromm, Marcuse cites Orwell’s analysis of language in illus-trating how words are used to mean their opposite. For example, themeaning of peace is redefined so that “preparing for war is workingfor peace” (p. 96). Supporters of the 2003 unilateral American inva-sion of Iraq frequently used this formulation.

A crucial component of repressive tolerance is the metanarra-tive of democratic tolerance. This narrative is ideologically em-bedded in the way adult educators sometimes think of democraticdiscussion, where the intent is to honor and respect each learner’svoice. But the implicit assumption that all contributions to a dis-cussion carry equal weight can easily lead to a flattening of con-versation. A discussion leader’s concern to dignify each adult’spersonhood can result in a refusal to point out the ideologicallyskewed nature of particular contributions, let alone saying some-one is wrong. In Marcuse’s view, the ideology of democratic toler-ance in adult discussion groups means that “the stupid opinion istreated with the same respect as the intelligent one, the misin-formed may talk as long as the informed, and propaganda ridesalong with falsehood. This pure tolerance of sense and nonsenseis justified by the democratic argument that nobody, neither groupnor individual, is in possession of the truth and capable of defin-ing what is right and wrong, good and bad” (p. 94). As we saw ear-lier, Marcuse’s explanation for this is people’s unfamiliarity withabstract, conceptual thought. False concreteness means that dis-cussion participants are unable to think in terms of universal moralimperatives, reverting instead to a position in which any idea orpractice is right or wrong depending on the circumstance.

Under repressive tolerance the airing of a radical perspectiveas one among many possible viewpoints on a situation always worksto the detriment of that perspective. This is because participants aredisposed to skepticism or hostility regarding new ideas due to theirformative ideological conditioning. Thus “persuasion through dis-cussion and the equal presentation of opposites (even where it isreally equal) easily lose their liberating force as factors of under-standing and learning; they are far more likely to strengthen theestablished thesis and to repel the alternatives” (p. 97). In a con-temporary analysis of the discourse of multicultural inclusion, San


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Juan (2002) adopts a Marcusean posture by arguing that such dis-course (and its related practices of celebrating diversity) only serveto affirm the legitimacy of the capitalist status quo. Heretically (atleast to many adult educators) Marcuse even suggests that withsome people discussion is a waste of time. In his view “there are infact large groups in the population with whom discussion is hope-less” (1970, p. 102) owing to the rigidity of their opinions. So thebest thing to do, in Marcuse’s opinion, is avoid talking to them.

The only way to make democracy a reality, in Marcuse’s view,is to have its participants in full possession of all relevant infor-mation. He argues that “the democratic argument implies a nec-essary condition, namely that the people must be capable ofdeliberating and choosing on the basis of knowledge, that theymust have access to authentic information, and that, on this basis,their evaluation must be the result of autonomous thought”(p. 95). In stressing the necessity of adult autonomous thought,Marcuse takes us right to the idea of self-direction but a politicizedinterpretation of that idea that avoids collapsing into the self-indulgent reiteration of familiar ideas. For him self-direction existswhen individuals are “freed from the repressive requirements ofa struggle for existence in the interest of domination” (p. 105)and able to choose where best to exercise their creativity. In ex-hibiting the capacity to think autonomously, people are thusdemonstrating their maturity. Marcuse quotes J. S. Mill’s argumentthat democracy only works if those involved are “human beings inthe maturity of their faculty . . . capable of being improved by freeand equal discussion” (p. 86).

A crucial step toward autonomous thinking is to smash themyths of objectivity and impartiality that allow false consciousnessto become mainstream consciousness. Marcuse believes that wemust “break the established universe of meaning (and the practiceenclosed within this universe)” (p. 98) so that people are “freedfrom the prevailing indoctrination (which is no longer recognizedas indoctrination)” (p. 99). In a society living under false con-sciousness, people “are indoctrinated by the conditions underwhich they live and think and which they do not transcend” (p. 98).To help them emerge from this, they need to realize that truth ismanipulated, that the “facts” “are established, mediated, by those


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who made them” (p. 99). They need to shed the tolerance for mul-tiple truths, each of which is presumed to have its own integrity andinternal validity, and realize instead that “there is an objective truthwhich can be discovered, ascertained only in learning and com-prehending that which is and that which can be and ought to bedone for the sake of improving the lot of mankind” (p. 88). Thisobjective truth is a liberatory truth concerning the need to abolishthe one-dimensional society, and it must always take precedenceover a supposedly respectful, but ultimately repressive, tolerance ofall viewpoints. To Marcuse “tolerance cannot be indiscriminate andequal . . . it cannot protect false words and wrong deeds whichdemonstrate that they contradict and counteract the possibilities ofliberation” (p. 88).

The key point for Marcuse is that learning to break free of one-dimensional thought requires a necessary rupture with the appear-ance of facts and truth. This rupture “cannot be accomplishedwithin the established framework of abstract tolerance and spuri-ous objectivity because these are precisely the factors which pre-condition the mind against the rupture” (p. 99). Providing asmorgasbord of alternative views, traditions, and perspectives inthe name of a pluralist tolerance of diversity only ensures that theradical ones are marginalized by the dominant consciousness. Theonly way to break with the face of spurious impartiality is toimmerse adults fully and exclusively in a radically different per-spective that challenges mainstream ideology and confronts thelearner with “information slanted in the opposite direction” (p.99). After all, “unless the student learns to think in the oppositedirection, he will be inclined to place the facts into the predomi-nant framework of values” (p. 113).

This forced rupture with mainstream reality will inevitably becastigated as undemocratic censorship, a criticism Marcuse expectsas the predictable response of organized repression and indoctri-nation. But he is firm that “the ways should not be blocked onwhich a subversive majority could develop, and if they are blockedby organized repression and indoctrination, their reopening mayrequire apparently undemocratic means” (p. 100). An intoleranceof certain teaching practices (Marcuse does not specify which) mayalso be called for if students are to develop autonomous thought.He writes that “the restoration of freedom of thought may neces-


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sitate new and rigid restrictions on teachings and practices in theeducational institutions which, by their very methods and concepts,serve to enclose the mind within the established universe of dis-course and behavior—thereby precluding a priori a rational eval-uation of the alternatives” (pp. 100–101).

In a society characterized by repressive tolerance, the domi-nant minority—particular corporations and the media—claim thatan open marketplace for the dissemination of ideas by all exists,when in reality they exercise an ideological monopoly. To Marcuse,the free exchange of ideas is a myth since it is the White Right thathas the purchasing power to buy control of the media. In such asituation the truly fair thing is to discriminate in favor of the Left,or racially grounded perspectives, and to give a preponderance ofspace to subtly discredited discourses such as Africentrism, femi-nism, queer theory, and postcolonialism. Because the roar of thecorporate mainstream media drowns out dissenting voices, weneed positive discrimination in favor of “the small and powerlessminorities which struggle against the false consciousness and itsbeneficiaries” (Marcuse, 1965a, p. 110). These should be helpedbecause “their continued existence is more important than thepreservation of abused rights and liberties which grant constitu-tional powers to those who oppress these minorities” (p. 110).Hence, “the exercise of civil rights by those who don’t have thempresupposes the withdrawal of civil rights from those who preventtheir exercise” (p. 110). This is a kind of community-sponsoredintellectual affirmative action in favor of leftist perspectives; “with-drawal of tolerance from regressive movements, and discriminatingtolerance in favor of progressive tendencies would be tantamountto the ‘official’ promotion of subversion” (p. 107).

So, for Marcuse, the end of a democratic access to objectivetruth justifies the means of censoring dominant, mainstream ideasand discriminating in favor of outlawed knowledges. Realizing theobjective of tolerance calls “for intolerance toward prevailing poli-cies, attitudes, opinions, and the extension of tolerance to policies,attitudes, and opinions which are outlawed or suppressed” (p. 81).Although early in the essay he states that “censorship of art and lit-erature is regressive under all circumstances” (p. 89), twenty-onepages later, in outlining the necessary steps to stop the developmentof false consciousness, he argues that such efforts “must begin with


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stopping the words and images which feed this consciousness. Tobe sure this is censorship, even precensorship, but openly directedagainst the more or less hidden censorship that permeates the freemedia” (p. 111). Not only should words and images (literature andart) be censored, we also need to censor the right of speech andassembly. In an argument preceding contemporary “hate speech”policies, Marcuse stated that it was important to stop privilegedgroups preaching hateful intolerance but using the umbrella of tol-erance of diversity as cover. A full and proper consideration of dis-allowed ideas can only happen by “the withdrawal of toleration ofspeech and assembly from groups and movements which promoteaggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on thegrounds of race and religion, or which oppose the extension ofpublic services, social security, medical care” (p. 100).

As can be imagined, Marcuse’s vigorous assertion of the needto censor conservative viewpoints proved highly contentious andwas responsible for much of the notoriety mentioned at the begin-ning of the chapter. But he points out that his own life has sufferedthe consequences of repressive tolerance. He writes that “if theNazi movement had not been tolerated once it revealed its char-acter, which was quite early, if it had not enjoyed the benefits ofthat democracy, then we probably would not have experienced thehorrors of the Second World War and some other horrors as well”(Marcuse, 1970, p. 99). For him the example of Nazi Germany pro-vides a powerful illustration of “an unequivocal position accordingto which we can say: here are moments that should not be toler-ated if an improvement and pacification of human life is to be at-tained” (p. 99).

As a proponent of the view that critical theory is always criticalof its own assumptions, it is not surprising that Marcuse’s work chal-lenges familiar practices suggested by a critical theory of adultlearning. Adult educators in the critical tradition envisage teach-ers and learners engaged in a collaborative cocreation of knowl-edge as they embrace a diversity of perspectives and experiences.Marcuse adds some useful dissonance and counterpoint to thisprogressive symphony of tolerance, diversity, and collaboration. Hereestablishes a justifiable difference between educators and learn-ers. He forces us to pay attention to elements of subjectivity—


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isolation, distance, privacy, memory—that are too easily dismissedas examples of privatized ways of being and learning. He reestab-lishes the importance of aesthetics as a spur to adults’ disengage-ment from the dominant culture, and as offering criteria we canuse to build a liberated society. He challenges the self-evident truththat a tolerant embrace of diverse views is inherently humanisticand democratic and confronts us with the uncomfortable propo-sition that there should be an intolerance of diversity, if diversity isset up to ensure that antidemocratic forces prevail. If diverse per-spectives are reviewed against a backdrop in which one perspectiveis thrown into sharp relief, this does not equalize diversity. What isneeded for true diversity is a total immersion in a completely dif-ferent set of perspectives not widely accessible, as would happen,say, if an adult education doctoral program deliberately immersedits students only in an Africentric perspective.

Finally, Marcuse builds a bridge between critical theory and cul-tural studies with its focus on the dominating influence of popu-lar culture. To Marcuse it is as important to study popular aestheticforms—architecture, songs, commercials, films, magazines—as itis to study the distribution of wealth. In an era when adult educa-tional practices are all too easily labeled as transformative or lib-eratory, we need to read Marcuse to see that liberation is not justa matter of opening ourselves to new perspectives or even of alter-ing economic and political structures. Learning liberation in adult-hood requires a deep-seated change in the ways we experience theworld that takes place at an instinctual, sensual level.


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Chapter Eight

Reclaiming Reason

In this and the following chapter, I review the work of Jürgen Haber-mas, the contemporary critical theorist who is most prominent inthe consciousness of adult education. Over the course of his career,Habermas has been ready to connect critical theory to a wide rangeof contemporary concerns and events, most recently the September11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York (Borradori,Habermas, and Derrida, 2003). In the field of adult education, hisideas have been highly influential to the development of transfor-mative learning theory (Mezirow, 1991a, 2000) and to other attemptsto develop a critical theory of adult learning (Welton, 1991, 1993,1995, 2000, 2001, 2003; Collins, 1991, 1998; Hart, 1990). One rea-son for his influence is that he connects directly to the Lindeman-ian strain of adult education that emphasizes discussion and dialogas quintessential practices in the field. A recent comparative analy-sis of Freire and Habermas points out that both these thinkers sharea commitment to dialogical, communicative learning as a funda-mentally democratic process (Morrow and Torres, 2002). In Mor-row and Torres’ view, Habermas, like Freire, articulates a “criticaltheory of society that seeks to bridge between revolutionary Marx-ism and reformist liberalism” (p. 3).

In this chapter I sketch out Habermas’ place in the broader crit-ical theory tradition and review his attempt to reclaim reason fromthe instrumentalized void it was exiled to in Horkheimer andAdorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment (1972). The bulk of the chapterexamines the three crises Habermas believes Western societies arefacing—the decline of the public sphere (the informal arenas inwhich citizens meet to talk through societal crises and issues), thethreat to civil society (the organizations and associations, not directly

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controlled by the state or corporations, in which we live our lives),and the invasion of the lifeworld (the clusters of preconscious under-standings that structure how we see the world and communicate ourunderstandings to others). These crises all signify a loss in people’sability to apply reason to the discussion and resolution of commonsocial problems. His analysis of how we can learn our way out ofthese crises through communicative action and deliberative democ-racy follow in Chapter Nine.

Habermas and Adult EducationIt all started with Jack Mezirow. In 1981, in an article that filled inthe theoretical background to his earlier work on perspectivetransformation, Mezirow published “A Critical Theory of AdultLearning and Education” (Mezirow, 1981). As an English adulteducator, at that time working in London and Leicester as aresearcher for the ill-fated national Advisory Council for Adultand Continuing Education (ACACE) of England and Wales, Iread Mezirow’s article with a sense of surprise. In my ethnocen-tric arrogance, I had assumed that things theoretical were theexclusive concern of European adult education and that Ameri-can adult education was hopelessly fixated on empirical mattersof practice. Little did I guess that in the following year I would beworking as Mezirow’s colleague at Teachers Colleague in New Yorkand that he would become both a close personal friend (I wasmarried in his apartment) and an important model for me of ascholar who conducted a continuous critical inquiry into his owntheoretical positions.

That 1981 article had far-reaching consequences for adult edu-cation scholarship. For a significant number of adult educators, itoffered a very different theoretical slant to the then almost exclusivefocus on andragogy and self-directed learning. Subsequently, it ush-ered in a host of confirmatory studies (Taylor, 1997, 2000a, 2000b)designed to extend and refine Mezirow’s theoretical insights. It alsoprompted a vigorous debate between Mezirow and his interpretersand critics (see for example, Collard and Law, 1989; Clark and Wil-son, 1991; Tennant, 1993; Mezirow, 1989, 1991b, 1992, 1994b, 1997).Mezirow subsequently broadened his ideas into a full-blown theoryof adult transformative learning (1990, 1991a, 2000) that has been

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enormously influential. Because of Jack Mezirow, scholarship in thefield has become much more self-consciously theoretical.

What was surprising to many about Mezirow’s 1981 article wasthe fact that his theory of adult learning explicated the ideas of aGerman intellectual—Jürgen Habermas—whose work had onlyrecently appeared in English. In a series of books published in the1970s (Habermas, 1970, 1971, 1973, 1975, 1979), Habermas devel-oped a concept of democracy grounded in a theory of communi-cation. He accepted critical theory’s articulation of the extensionof technocratic consciousness into everyday life but argued that atheory concerned with human liberation should replace the Marx-ist emphasis on how people organize and conduct their patterns ofproduction with a focus on how they organize and conduct theirpatterns of communication. If we could understand the conditionsnecessary for people to participate in full, free, and equal discourse,Habermas argued, then we would have a theory—the theory of com-municative action—that would guide the operation of democracy.

Mezirow’s 1981 article took Habermas’ concern with the eman-cipatory dimensions of communicative action, reinterpreted eman-cipatory action as adult perspective transformation, and linked thisto contemporary adult educational ideas of self-directed learningand andragogy. In viewing these concepts through a Habermasianlens, Mezirow introduced adult educators who had been comfort-able with the tradition of humanistic psychology to the realizationthat a more conflictual, Marxist-inclined approach to interpretingadult learning processes was possible. Since 1981 Mezirow hasmoved beyond Habermas’ work and, in a manner echoing Haber-mas’ own intellectual eclecticism, has crossed theoretical traditionsas diverse as linguistics, information processing, artificial intelli-gence, and cognitive development. As Mezirow develops his ever-expanding theory of transformative learning, it has fallen to othersto interpret the relevance of Habermas’ constantly evolving bodyof work for adult education. Of these interpreters, Michael Weltonis undoubtedly the most prominent.

In a series of articles and chapters, Welton (1991, 1993, 1995,2000, 2001, 2003) has parlayed Habermas’ own convoluted, dense,endlessly hyphenated prose into a passionate and lucid justifica-tion of adult educators’ need to move beyond simplistic declara-tions of the importance of social transformation to “speak in a


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more self-limiting and precise way about the asymmetrical rela-tionship between the system (state and work) and the lifeworld(civil society)” (Welton, 2001, p. 32). Giving up “the old Marxiandream of total change” (p. 32) is necessary in Habermas’ (and Wel-ton’s) view if we are to work to achieve realistic and specific socialchanges in particular contexts. They argue that because the indus-trial working class is no longer the chief engine of revolutionarychange our efforts at resistance must be located in social move-ments and grassroots activism across a wide range of issues. Haber-mas and Welton both believe this is the only realistic chance wehave of preserving, let alone extending, the democratic processwithin civil society. They argue that learning how to defend the life-world against the system and how to restrict the increasing influ-ence of steering mechanisms within the public sphere (ideas to beconsidered later in this chapter) are adult learning projects at theheart of twenty-first century democracy.

Locating Habermas in the Critical Theory TraditionHabermas is the contemporary figure who most probably comesquickest to adult educators’ minds when the term critical theory ismentioned, and there is no doubt that his ideas have been stronglyinfluenced by that tradition. However, Habermas himself mentionsmany times that he was not formally schooled in the tradition(indeed, he belonged to the Hitler Youth in his early adolescence)and that knowledge of it came through his own self-education. InHabermas’ view, the Frankfurt School never really existed as a co-hesive group of scholars pursuing a distinctive intellectual projectwhen it was located in Frankfurt. It was only during the 1930s exileof the school’s members in New York that it really came to life(Habermas, 1985b, p. 68). Undeniably, though, Habermas’ ownintellectual journey and his autobiography are inextricably inter-twined with critical theory. He was hired as Adorno’s research assis-tant, came to occupy the Max Horkheimer Chair in Philosophyand Sociology at the Frankfurt Institute, and could speak about hispersonal conversations with Marcuse just before Marcuse’s death(Habermas, 1992a).

Habermas’ own positioning within critical theory is a complexmatter. At times he refers to himself as a Marxist, declaring in one


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breath that “today I value being considered a Marxist” while in thenext breath cautioning that “I’m not a Marxist in the sense of be-lieving in Marxism as a sure-fire explanation” (1992a, p. 82). For himMarxism is a useful heuristic tool to understand the logic of capital-ism’s development, providing “the impetus and the analytical meansto investigate the development of the relationship between democ-racy and capitalism” (p. 82). In Habermas’ view, “the fundamentalquestion posed by Marx” is “how capitalist expansion . . . affects thestructure of the lifeworld” (1992a, p. 91). This question, as we shallsee later in this chapter, is also fundamentally important to Haber-mas himself.

In line with Marx, Habermas sees theorizing as having an ex-plicitly emancipatory intent. The purpose of theorizing about soci-ety is to understand the mechanisms and relations at play so thatthese can be altered to give greater opportunity for people to real-ize their creative potential. Historical materialism—Marx’s theo-retical understanding of how the organization of productive forcesup to capitalism has shaped social evolution—is one such theorythat helps us understand these mechanisms and relations. InHabermas’ view the theory of historical materialism is bound upwith humans’ attempts to become more self-aware and “specifiesthe conditions under which reflection on the history of our speciesby members of this species has become objectively possible”(Habermas, 1973, p. 1). The theory’s purpose is to galvanize theproletariat, and those bourgeois individuals who wish to aid the re-volution, by providing insight into the process of revolutionarychange. It “names those to whom this theory is addressed, whothen with its aid can gain enlightenment about their emancipatoryrole in the process of history” (p. 2). In Communication and the Evo-lution of Society (1979), Habermas refers approvingly to historicalmaterialism as “a theory that needs revision in many respects butwhose potential for stimulation has still not been exhausted”(p. 94). He describes himself as engaged in a project to help it “at-tain more fully the goal it has set for itself” (p. 94), of providingguidelines for the creation of democratic socialism.

How does Habermas set about reconstructing Marxism for thetwentieth and twenty-first centuries? Here the centrality of learning—particularly adult learning—clearly emerges. If a distinguishing char-acteristic of humans is their capacity to learn, then social science andeducational theoreticians need to focus much more centrally on how


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adults learn to create a more moral, just democracy. Marx’s mistake(to Habermas) was that he “localized the learning process impor-tant for evolution in the dimension of objectivating thought—oftechnical and organizational knowledge, of instrumental and strate-gic action, in short, of productive forces” (1979, p. 98). Concen-trating on how people learn to organize production efficiently andexploitatively is too restrictive a focus for adult learning theorists,given that the capacity for learning permeates all facets of adult life.In Habermas’ view, “there are good reasons meanwhile for assum-ing that learning processes also take place in the dimension ofmoral insight, practical knowledge, communicative action, and theconsensual regulation of action conflicts” (p. 98). If we are to pre-serve and extend the democratic process, we need to help adultslearn how to anticipate and resolve the inevitable contradictionsand tensions of democracy. So historical materialism should bebroadened, in Habermas’ view, to explore the “learning processesthat are deposited in more mature forms of social integration, innew productive relations, that in turn first make possible the intro-duction of new productive forms” (p. 98).

For Habermas, then, “a critical theory of society can no longerbe constructed in the exclusive form of a critique of political econ-omy” (1970, p. 120). It must broaden its concern to investigate mat-ters of morality and communication and how a democratic societymight organize itself to promote the fullest and freest communica-tion possible amongst its members. Habermas has commented that“it was always my feeling that there was no adequate theory ofdemocracy in Marxism” (1992a, p. 188) and that “the old Frankfurtschool never took bourgeois democracy very seriously” (p. 99). Soone thrust of his Marxist reconstruction is to reestablish the cre-ation of genuine democracy as the purpose of revolutionarychange. This has led him to engage with American pragmatism,especially the work of Charles Pierce and his “radical-democratichumanism” or “logical socialism” (p. 189). Habermas acknowledges,“I have relied on this American version of the philosophy of praxiswhen the problem arises of compensating for the weaknesses ofMarxism with respect to democratic theory” (p. 149). His debt toPierce, Dewey, and other American pragmatists is evident in thosetimes when he prefaces his observations with remarks like “as agood pragmatist” (Habermas, 1985a, p. 198).


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Habermas has also incorporated aspects of liberalism into hiswork, thus committing the ultimate betrayal of Marxism to manyon the left. Acknowledging that “my Marxist friends are not en-tirely unjustified in accusing me of being a radical liberal” (1992a,p. 171), Habermas views the liberal ideal of personal freedom asan important criterion to employ when judging whether or notdemocracy exists. To him freedom is indivisible and universal andcannot be said to exist if any in a society are unfree. In his words,“the individual cannot be free unless all are free, and all cannot befree unless all are free in community” (p. 146). He is careful to dis-tinguish freedom from anarchic selfishness, as in “do your ownthing without regard to others.” Freedom is a social relationshipin which the rights one person takes to herself are extended to allothers. Hence “freedom of choice in the last instance can only bethought in internal connection with a network of inter-personalrelationships” (p. 146). It is present only “in the context of thecommunicative structures of a community, which ensures that thefreedom of some is not achieved at the cost of the freedom of oth-ers” (p. 146).

The imperative of freedom applies equally to liberalism andsocialism. For him “socialism and liberty are identical” (1992a,p. 75), and socialist theory is “an attempt . . . to indicate the nec-essary conditions which would have to be in place for emancipatedlife-forms to emerge” (p. 145). Socialism is a useful organizing ideathat offers criteria we should consider when trying to organize soci-ety fairly. As such “it serves as the idea of the epitome of the nec-essary conditions for emancipated forms of life, about which theparticipants themselves would have to reach understanding”(Habermas, 1994, p. 113). This interpretation of socialism stressesits democratic imperatives, in the manner of Marcuse and Fromm,rather than the principle of collective ownership and control ofthe means of production. Socialism, for Habermas, is as muchabout establishing inclusive conversational forms as it is aboutnationalizing private industries.

In Habermas’ view, critical theory not only overemphasizes themeans of production but also stresses too much the way reason hasbecome distorted under capitalism. To him, books such as Eclipseof Reason (Horkheimer, [1947] 1974) and Dialectic of Enlightenment


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(Horkheimer and Adorno, 1972) “took refuge in an abstract cri-tique of instrumental reason and made only a limited contributionto the empirical analysis of the over-complex reality of our society”(Habermas, 1992a, p. 56). Habermas does not agree withHorkheimer and Adorno that reason has been so totally instru-mentalized that it has been denuded of all moral force. He isalarmed that Dialectic of Enlightenment (discussed in detail in Chap-ter Three) is forced “to oversimplify its image of modernity soastoundingly” (Habermas, 1987b, p. 112) in its effort to prove that“in cultural modernity, reason gets definitively stripped of its valid-ity claim and assimilated to sheer power” (p. 112). He also makesthe point that Horkheimer and Adorno use critical reason to provethe impossibility of using critical reason! In Dialectic of Enlighten-ment, the “description of the self-destruction of the critical capac-ity is paradoxical, because in the moment of description it still hasto make use of the critique that has been declared dead” (Haber-mas, 1987b, p. 119).

Habermas places his own understanding of reason “muchcloser to the practical attitudes of Marcuse . . . to the idea that thelife of theory is a project of practical reason, or conducted in itsname” (Habermas, 1992a, p. 190). He declares his “special affinitywith the existentialist, i.e. the Marcusean, variant of critical theory”(p. 150) that he believes affirms the possibility of reestablishingreason to serve the creation of a humane democracy. Marcusebeckons to Habermas because Marcuse “made appeals to futurealternatives” (Habermas, 1985b, p. 67), “spoke a straight, affirma-tive language, easy to understand” (p. 69), and constantly displayed“one of his most admirable features—not to give into defeatism”(p. 76).

Leaving aside the reference to Marcuse’s easy-to-understandlanguage, Habermas’ comments on Marcuse could apply equallyto Habermas himself. If Dialectic of Enlightenment “holds out scarcelyany prospect for an escape from the myth of purposive rationalitythat has turned into negative violence” (Habermas, 1987b, p. 114),then Habermas’ own books set out to reclaim reason and place itat the center of his attempt to ground democracy in a theory ofcommunication. In Postmetaphysical Thinking (Habermas, 1992b),he states as his aim “to defend and make fruitful for social theory a


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concept of reason that attends to the phenomenon of the lifeworldand permits the ‘consciousness of society as a whole’ . . . to be re-formulated on the basis of a theory of intersubjectivity” (p. 141).He disapproves of the radical critique “which equates reason as awhole with repression—and then fatalistically and ecstatically seeksrefuge in something wholly Other” (p. 8). For him, dismissing rea-son as hopelessly compromised and the willing, uncritical servantof capitalism or technocracy is too simplistic. It throws the baby ofcritical reason applied in the cause of democracy out with the bath-water of compromised reason serving the cause of exploitation.Habermas’ view of critical theory “retains a concept of reasonwhich asserts itself simultaneously against both scientific mutila-tion and existentialist downgrading, and which is furthermore alsocritically applied to itself” (1992a, p. 55).

So the reclamation of reason as the heart of critical theory is acentral theme in Habermas’ work. Reason underscores his theoryof communicative action, which focuses on the assessment of thosevalidity claims (is what we say understandable, true, and sincere?)that Habermas believes are implicit in every speech act or utter-ance. His concept of the ideal speech situation—“a description ofthe conditions under which claims to truth and rightness can bediscursively redeemed” (Habermas, 1992a, p. 171)—is, as we shallsee in Chapter Nine, pivotal to his understanding of the place ofreason in human communication. The ideal speech situation estab-lishes an ideal of full, free, and equal discourse in which under-standings and agreements are reached through the giving ofreasons for action. He quite deliberately uses the ideal speech sit-uation “to reconstruct the concept of reason, that is, a concept ofcommunicative reason, which I would like to utilize against Adornoand Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment” (Habermas, 1992a,p. 93).

The ideal of reason also lies at the heart of his discourse the-ory of deliberative democracy, which explores the reaching of deci-sions through rationally driven efforts to come to consensus. Infact reason, in Habermas’ view, underlies the very survival of thespecies: “A species that depends for its survival on the structures oflinguistic communication and co-operative, purposive-rationalaction must of necessity rely on reason. In the validity claims, how-ever implicit, by means of which we are obliged to orientate our-


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selves in our communicative actions, a persistent, albeit repeatedlysuppressed, claim of reason lies concealed” (p. 58).

Reason serves human emancipation, and critical theory’s con-cern with emancipation is reaffirmed in Habermas’ own work. Hesays he “cannot imagine any seriously critical social theory withoutan internal link to something like an emancipatory interest” (1992a,p. 193). Just as reason is a species-survival need, so is the desire foremancipation expressed as “the calling into question, and deep-seated wish to throw off, relations which repress without necessity”(p. 194). The emancipatory drive for freedom is so “profoundlyingrained in the structure of human species . . . intimately built intothe reproduction of human life” that it must be considered “part ofthe basic structure of the theory of cognitive interests” (p. 194). Acritical theory of adult learning in a Habermasian key studies howpeople learn to realize this desire for freedom in their personal rela-tionships and in the creation of genuinely democratic politicalforms. It also studies the forces and structures that attempt to pre-vent this freedom being realized.

Habermas connects the human striving for freedom with a ver-sion of ideology critique that is focused specifically on patterns andstructures of communication. Ideology critique unmasks how ideasand theories that we accept as true, and definitions of what we con-sider reasonable conduct and aspirations, in reality serve to supportthe interests of the powerful. To Habermas, “ideology critique wantsto show how . . . validity claims are determined by relationships ofpower” (1987b, p. 116). In a critical theory of communicative ac-tion, ideology critique reveals “the relations of power surreptitiouslyincorporated in the symbolic structures of speech and action”(Habermas, 1973, p. 12). Realizing how power relations are em-bedded in linguistic conventions is the necessary precursor to learn-ing how to alter these same relations. In Habermas’ view, “therelations of power embodied in systematically distorted communi-cation can be attacked directly by the process of critique” with theresulting insights leading to “emancipation from unrecognized de-pendencies” (p. 9). Reason is claimed as crucial to freedom.

One of the central projects of critical theory is claiming free-dom. Fromm, Marcuse, and Habermas are all concerned to releasepeople from falsely created needs and help them make their ownfree choices regarding how they wish to think and live. Critics of


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critical theory, however, have often been very successful in framingit as a wholly materialistic discourse concerned only with economicarrangements. While it is true that critical theory springs from thedesire to abolish the exchange economy of capitalism, the roots ofthat desire have less to do with creating worker cooperatives andredistributing wealth and more to do with allowing people to real-ize their creativity through the free choice of how they might usetheir labor. For Habermas, the whole point of people using reasonto help rebuild civil society and the public sphere is so that theycan then make free choices about the nature of that society andthe issues they think are truly important. Given the valorization offreedom in American culture, a Habermasian emphasis on criticaltheory as the engine of freedom is a useful entry point into the crit-ical tradition for many students.

Before leaving this discussion of Habermas’ relationship to thecritical theory tradition, it is important to note that Habermasstresses the self-critical nature of critical theory claimed in ChapterOne as integral to criticality. In his estimation critical theory appliescritical reason to its own propositions, which must always be con-sidered provisional. He believes that critical theory “can only makepronouncements with a claim to propositional truth” (Habermas,1992a, p. 101) and that we should conduct “the attempt to continuecritical social theory in an unreservedly self-correcting and self-critical mode” (p. 212). Critical theory’s lack of attention to em-pirical proof is a serious flaw in Habermas’ opinion, and his ownwriting displays an astonishing grasp of empirical work in linguis-tics, anthropology, sociology, cognitive and developmental psy-chology, and economics. For him critical theory moves forward byengaging its critics on the one hand (something Habermas doesconstantly) and seeking empirical confirmation or refutation of itspropositions on the other.

Problems Addressed by Critical Theory 1:The Decline of the Public SphereI read Habermas as a theorist of democracy who believes that asociety is more or less democratic according to the processes itsmembers use to come to decisions about matters that affect theirlives. The more democratic the society, the fuller the information


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its citizens have access to and the fewer the distortions that con-strain their communication. For Habermas democracy is all aboutcommunication—the freest, least-restricted communication possi-ble. In his view the greater the freedom of conversation that peo-ple enjoy, the higher the chance that true critical reason—reasonemployed to create a just, humane democracy—will emerge.

Under contemporary industrial capitalism, however, certain socialdevelopments have inhibited the democratic way of life. Society hasbecome too vast and complicated for everyone to sit round a tableand talk about how they wish to arrange things. To use the terms thatHabermas employs across his work, the public sphere has collapsedand both civil society and the lifeworld have become dominated by—steered by—mechanisms of money and power. Terms such as the pub-lic sphere, lifeworld, and so on are unfamiliar to many American adulteducators and have prevented them from fully engaging with Haber-mas’ work. But these concepts are so integral to his attempts to out-line how democracy can be established that they cannot be avoided.I hope readers already familiar with these ideas will forgive my expli-cation of their meaning in the rest of this chapter.

At the core of Habermas’ concern about the loss of reason inmodern life is the collapse of the public sphere. The public sphereis the civic space or “commons” in which adults come together todebate and decide their response to shared issues and problems. Insimple terms it is like an enormous outdoor café full of people talk-ing about concerns they share in common or a chat room in whichpeople log on to register and exchange their views about some-thing. Habermas sees the public sphere as “a network for commu-nicating information and points of view; i.e. opinions expressingaffirmative or negative attitudes” (Habermas, 1996, p. 360). The“streams of communication” that flow through this network “are,in the process, filtered and synthesized in such a way that they coa-lesce into bundles of topically specified public opinions” (p. 360).

As people talk with varying degrees of informality about issuesthat affect them, viewpoints emerge that represent the chief clus-ters of their opinions and that are noticed by politicians, govern-ment officials, pollsters, media workers, and so on. As a result theopinions developed informally in the public sphere come to affecthow more formal political and legislative deliberations are con-ducted. In this way the public sphere is “an intermediary between


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the political system, on the one hand, and the private sectors of thelifeworld and functional systems, on the other” (p. 373). This inter-mediary mechanism never coalesces into a formal system or struc-ture. By definition the public sphere is fluid and resists calcification.Habermas writes that “publics cannot harden into organizations orsystems” because their boundaries “remain permeable in principle”(p. 374).

Sometimes the public sphere is the site of brief conversationsamong a few people, sometimes a more sustained discussion in alarger group takes place. People talk episodically at subway stops,in pubs, or on the street, but they also talk in the interstices oflarger public events—waiting in line for the cinema, at half-timeat football matches, in the corridors between sessions at academicconferences, over coffee at a political congress. There is also amore abstract form of talk that happens when readers, viewers, lis-teners, and Internet users around the world connect with eachother through media and technology. These different levels of thepublic sphere are interconnected and flow in and out of eachother so that “all the partial publics constituted by ordinary lan-guage remain porous to one another” (1996, p. 374). Sometimes,as Newman (1999) illustrates, adult educators can initiate an infor-mal conversation (an episodic public sphere) that results in a coa-lescence of opinion and a desire to do something about a situation(what Habermas calls political will-formation).

In The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere ([1962]1989b), Habermas painstakingly traces how, as society becomesever larger and more differentiated into complex subsystems, “thecommunicative network of a public made up of rationally debat-ing private citizens has collapsed” (p. 247). The town meeting, village green gathering, or tribal circle cannot provide effectiveforums for the kind of public discussion of community concernsthat lies at the heart of democracy. Yet democracy cannot existwithout a public sphere that allows people to talk out their feelingsand opinions and gather their political energies behind a particu-lar movement for change. For Habermas “democratically consti-tuted opinion and will-formation depends on the supply of informal public opinions that, ideally, develop in structures of an unsubverted political public sphere” (Habermas, 1996, p. 308).


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In the absence of any arena in which adults can come togetherto debate and engage in political will-formation (the developmentof strands of opinion and the decision to act on these that sometimescomes after prolonged discussion), we cannot accurately talk aboutpublic opinion. This lack of a public sphere is a boon to govern-ments that seek to steamroller a vision of the world they wish peo-ple to accept as self-evident. Conversely, a public sphere that debateslong and hard about the morality of invading another country in theabsence of any visible threat, or that keeps focusing on the legitimacyof policies enacted by a president who received votes from fewer cit-izens than his or her rival, is extremely inconvenient for a regimedetermined to damp down public criticism of its actions.

Habermas defines public opinion as an informed viewpoint ona particular issue that is offered by a group of people involved inthat issue after they have engaged in a full consideration of all therelevant facts. In his view, however, true public opinion rarely devel-ops. Instead of a full conversation and the emergence of politicalwill-formation that real public opinion represents, we have a lim-ited political discourse controlled by media institutions. In hiswords public opinion “has partly decomposed into the informalopinions of private citizens without a public and partly becomeconcentrated into formal opinions of publistically effective insti-tutions” ([1962] 1989b, p. 247). We have our personal longingsand frustrations that we voice to family, friends, and colleagues or through occasional letters to editors, elected representatives, orpublic officials. Or, we have organizations, pressure groups, andinstitutions (corporations, government agencies, labor unions, pro-fessional associations, and so on) that disseminate the views of thosewho occupy the top positions in these groups, whether or not theseviews actually reflect the opinions of members.

The mass media then either serve as the mouthpiece for theseorganizations or reframe their opinions to support the existing sys-tem. In line with earlier Frankfurt School critiques of media andpopular culture, Habermas believes that “the electronic massmedia of today is organized in such a way that it controls the loy-alty of a depoliticised population” (Habermas, 1973, p. 4). In thisway the public sphere is severely diminished. Lacking the com-municative vehicles through which they can meet, discuss, anddecide their responses to the ways economic and social forces are


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shaping their lives, adults are left privately vociferous but publiclyvoiceless.

The diminution of the public sphere is a theme threading through-out Habermas’ work. It features as prominently in later books suchas Between Facts and Norms (1996), On the Pragmatics of Communica-tion (1998), and The Postnational Constellation (2001a) as it does inhis earliest work (The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere wasoriginally published in Germany in 1962). With the growth of cap-italism and the move from the industrial to the information society,the education system and class structure combine to force peopleinto more and more specialized roles and functions leaving themless and less prepared for participation in public discourse. Thelogic of capitalistic economic development is that “the unavoidabledivision of labor results in an unequal distribution of informationand expertise” (Habermas, 1996, p. 325). Some members of soci-ety, because of their class position, racial identity, and education,know more and have greater life chances than others. Inequitiesresulting from class and racial factors are further compounded bythe way “the communications media intervene with a selectivity oftheir own in this social distribution of knowledge” (p. 325).

For example, access to and technical knowledge of the work-ings of cyberspace are determined partly by people’s education,income, occupation, and status. These determining factors reflectthe wider organization of society for the benefit of certain groups.Without access to or knowledge of communication technology,large parts of the population are locked out of the public flow ofcommunication. Without membership in an influential organiza-tion or pressure group, people have no channel through which tovoice an opinion. In this situation “the structures of the publicsphere reflect unavoidable asymmetries in the availability of infor-mation, that is, unequal chances to have access to the generation,validation, shaping, and presentation of messages” (Habermas,1996, p. 225).

What are some of the consequences of the decline of the publicsphere? One is the growth of a destructive privatism, a focus on theself. When people have no way to influence discussion and decisionsin the wider society, they may as well pursue private goals withoutregard to the effects this pursuit has on others. In Legitimation Crisis(1975) Habermas describes the condition of a “structurally depoliti-


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cized public realm” (p. 37) in which administrative decisions aremade independent of people’s interests. We have the “applicationof institutions and procedures that are democratic in form, whilethe citizenry, in the midst of an objectively political society, enjoy thestatus of passive citizens with only the right to withhold acclamation”(p. 37). In such a situation civic privatism—“political abstinencecombined with an orientation to career, leisure and consumption”(p. 37)—is bound to flourish. Habermas notes how a “familial-vocational privatism complements civic privatism” (Habermas,1975, p. 75) by establishing “a family orientation with developedinterests in consumption and leisure on the one hand, and (in) acareer orientation suitable to status competition on the other”(p. 75). These forms of privatism are underscored by popular the-ories extolling the virtues of meritocracy, the rise of democraticelites, and the efficient workings of technocratic systems.

As well as encouraging the growth of a privatized attitude to life,the diminution of the public sphere neutralizes intellectual chal-lenges to the dominant order. When intellectuals act as social criticsto reveal and uncover the existence of social inequities, they needa public to receive, consider, and then sometimes act on such cri-tiques. With no public to debate the arguments and evidence theyoffer, no commons in which their analyses can be heard, intellec-tuals are impotent, offering only the sorts of notes to a dying civi-lization or messages in bottles mentioned at the end of Dialectic ofEnlightenment, Eclipse of Reason, or One Dimensional Man.

By definition, intellectual work (particularly critical theory) ispremised on the existence of a public sphere to receive it. Haber-mas writes that “when intellectuals, using arguments sharpened byrhetoric, intervene on behalf of rights that have been violated andtruths that have been suppressed, reforms that are overdue andprogress that has been delayed, they address themselves to a pub-lic sphere that is capable of response, alert and informed” (Haber-mas, 1989a, p. 73). This sphere can only exist when supported byconstitutional safeguards that ensure and encourage the freeexpression of critical opinion. In order to perform their proper crit-ical function, intellectuals “rely on a half way constitutional state”and on “a democracy that for its part survives only by virtue of theinvolvement of citizens who are as suspicious as they are combative”(p. 73).


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Problems Addressed by Critical Theory 2:The Threat to Civil SocietyIn Habermas’ analysis the decline of the public sphere is a functionof a concurrent social development, the increasing precariousnessof civil society. Civil society essentially comprises all those forms ofcollective human association not directly controlled by the state orcorporations. Everything from car pools to professional organiza-tions to alternative political movements is potentially part of civilsociety. Unlike the more amorphous and porous public sphere, civil society frequently organizes itself into groups with clearly des-ignated hierarchies of communication and conditions for mem-bership. The Adult Education Research Conference (AERC) andthe Commission of Professors of Adult Education (CPAE) in theirdifferent ways show some of the variety of civil society. The AERC,with its nomadic annual wanderings across the North Americancontinent, its lack of a formal membership, and its reliance on wordof mouth to publicize its activities, is a loosely organized part of civilsociety. By way of contrast, the CPAE is more closely structured. Tobe part of the CPAE, one must satisfy certain conditions. For exam-ple, one needs to hold a job with the title “professor” and to teachuniversity graduate courses in adult education. One also needs tobe part of a larger, dues paying, professional organization (theAmerican Association for Adult and Continuing Education) withits attendant qualifications for membership.

Habermas defines civil society as “composed of those more orless spontaneously emergent associations, organizations, and move-ments that, attuned to how societal problems resonate in the pri-vate life spheres, distill and transmit such reactions in amplifiedform to the public sphere” (Habermas, 1996, p. 367). In otherwords, the discussions people have within the organizations of civilsociety about particular problems that affect them help crystallizethe topics and issues that are then considered in the wider publicsphere. In the field of adult education, for example, some practi-tioners lament the infiltration of human capital perspectives intothe ways programs are created and evaluated. Others are worriedabout the way adult literacy sometimes becomes a palliative to pre-serve an unequal system, rather than a force for social change, orthe way literacy practitioners are treated as slave labor. The declineof voluntarism, the replacement of face-to-face learning by online


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instruction, the ascendance of efforts to certify, license, and profes-sionalize the field, the denial of funding to more radical, alternativeadult educational initiatives, and the general marginalization of pro-vision for adult education (the last to be funded, the first to becut)—all these are concerns that arise in that part of civil society wecall adult education and that some within that sector try to “distilland transmit” to the larger public sphere as items for discussion.

Marginalized groupings within civil society are not, by the way,entirely powerless or without influence. Sometimes those organi-zations and movements that find themselves exiled to the periph-ery of civil society have “the advantage of greater sensitivity indetecting and identifying new problem situations” (Habermas,1996, p. 381). Habermas cites as examples the way that certainissues (ecological threats, third-world crises, feminism, multicul-turalism) “were broached by intellectuals, concerned citizens, radi-cal professionals, self-proclaimed ‘advocates,’ and the like” (p. 381)long before occupying space in an admittedly diminished publicsphere. Also, as nongovernmental organizations (NGO’s), envi-ronmental agencies, and activist groups across the world begin tocoordinate their activities in opposition to global capitalism, thereis increasing talk of the idea of international civil society. As withdomestic civil society, the international counterpart also forcesissues into the realm of the international public sphere ensuringthat the agendas of formal institutional groupings such as theWorld Trade Organization (WTO) have to take account of inter-national civil society’s concerns. Given that the organizations ofdomestic and international civic society frequently generate issuesthat claim attention in the public sphere, Habermas argues that“the communicative structures of the public sphere must [rather]be kept intact by an energetic civil society” (1996, p. 369).

Unfortunately civil society is diminished as the political systemof state power, and the economic system of the capitalistic pursuitof profit, become ever more dominant. In Newman’s (1999) words,“Civil society may become what is left over in our lives after theparts that really matter have been taken out” (p. 150). When polit-ical and economic systems operate completely independently ofcivil society, then major decisions affecting our lives are taken bythese systems with no chance for their merits to be questioned orfor alternatives to be proposed or discussed. There is little point in


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joining a tenants’ group or showing up at neighborhood meetingsif all we are able to do is choose between options shaped and pre-sented to us by political or business interests. Civic democracy ishardly alive when all we can decide on are matters that are rela-tively trivial. Spending inordinate amounts of time debating theshape of a new bus shelter while a local industrial plant pollutesthe neighborhood’s air, for example, is a pale version of the robustcivil dialogue a democratic society requires.

When civil society is on the defensive, then the forces thatdetermine how the political and economic systems run—whatHabermas calls “steering mechanisms”—operate more or lessunchallenged. The steering mechanisms of money (the pursuit ofprofit through the exchange economy) and power (the mainte-nance by dominant groups of a system of ideological and techno-cratic domination) start to encroach on civil society. For example,the market—the web of economic exchanges, price control mech-anisms, cartel agreements, and patterns of consumption—impinges on our lives in ways that seem uncontrollable, beyondour influence. Boom and bust, recession and growth, “helpwanted” signs, or long dole queues—all these seem random hap-penings. In Habermas’ words economic crises “lose the characterof a fate accessible to self-reflection and acquire the objectivity ofinexplicable, contingent, natural events” (1975, p. 30). We also usemarket analogies—the “free market of ideas” is a good one—tostructure the conversations we have in civil society and in the pub-lic sphere. The fallacy of this particular analogy is that market oper-ations are not free at all. Those who exercise the greatest influencein the “free” market are often those who already have the greatestpower. The same is true of conversation circles. Those used tospeaking because they have the right accent, a facility in the dom-inant language, or because their education, money, skin color, gen-der, or social position ensure their opinions will be listened to,exercise a disproportionate influence.

Problems Addressed by Critical Theory 3:The Invasion of the LifeworldAs well as encroaching on civil society, the steering mechanisms ofmoney and power also invade the lifeworld. This is dangerous since


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“communication in a public sphere that recruits private personsfrom civil society depends on the spontaneous inputs from a life-world whose core private domains are intact” (Habermas, 1996,p. 417). If the lifeworld is controlled by money and power, then allthe discussions we have in the public sphere and all the topics weraise for discussion in the organizations of civil society are pro-foundly tainted and compromised without our ever being aware ofthat fact.

Unlike the public sphere or civil society, which can at least beseen physically (albeit sometimes fleetingly) in the form of con-versations, gatherings, associations, and organizational activities,the lifeworld is chiefly a mental, even a psychic, phenomenon. Itexists prereflectively, inside consciousness. Segments of the life-world can be glimpsed when they are thrown into sharp relief aselements of situations we have to respond to, and this is where weoften see most clearly the encroachment of steering mechanisms.But as the shadowy “horizon of shared, unproblematic beliefs”(Habermas, 1996, p. 22), the lifeworld cannot be penetrated. InHabermas’ view it is by definition unknowable. The lifeworld is soingrained in our structures of perception and communication thatwe cannot stand outside it and reflect back on it. It is “alwaysalready there” to use a common Habermas phrase, “a context thatcannot be gotten behind and cannot in principle be exhausted”(1987a, p. 133).

What exactly is the lifeworld? In one of the most quoted sen-tences from the second volume of The Theory of CommunicativeAction (1987a), Habermas describes it as “the intuitively present,in this sense familiar and transparent, and at the same time vastand incalculable web of presuppositions that have to be satisfied ifan actual utterance is to be at all meaningful, that is, valid or in-valid” (p. 131). As one graduate student dryly remarked to mewhen I presented this definition, “That’s not exactly helpful is it?”A simpler definition on the same page is perhaps clearer: “The life-world forms the indirect context of what is said, discussed,addressed in a situation” (p. 131). It is all those assumptions thatframe how we understand our experience of life and how we try toconvey that experience to others. Thus, “the lifeworld forms a hori-zon and at the same time offers a store of things taken for grantedin the given culture from which communicative participants draw


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consensual interpretative patterns in their efforts at interpretation”(Habermas, 1987b, p. 298). I think of the lifeworld as the back-ground rules, assumptions, and commonsense understandings thatstructure how we perceive the world and how we communicate thatperception to those around us. This kind of primordial, prereflec-tive knowledge hovers on the periphery of consciousness, a shad-owy frame to all we think and do.

The lifeworld is all-pervasive, the perceptual oxygen we breathewithout ever really being aware of our rhythmic inhalations or theway they keep us alive. Because it “only exists in the distinctive, pre-reflexive form of background assumptions, background receptivi-ties or background relations [it] dissolves and disappears beforeour eyes as soon as we try to take it up piece by piece” (Habermas,1992a, p. 109). It saturates our conversations, forming “the hori-zon in which communicative actions are ‘always already’ moving”(Habermas, 1987a, p. 119). The cultural knowledge embedded inthe lifeworld is “always already familiar” (p. 132), representing “astorehouse of unquestioned cultural givens from which those par-ticipating in communication draw agreed-upon patterns of inter-pretation for use in their interpretive efforts” (Habermas, 1990,p. 135). So every time we communicate with another person, as Iam trying to do with you by putting these marks on a page, we doso within a cluster, a web, of unwittingly shared understandings andunacknowledged ways of perceiving. Hence “as we engage in com-municative action, the lifeworld embraces us as an unmediated cer-tainty, out of whose immediate proximity we live and speak”(Habermas, 1996, p. 22).

A key element in Habermas’ treatment of this idea is that “thelifeworld always remains in the background” (Habermas, 1987a,p. 131), impenetrable and unknowable. No matter how hard wetry to uncover and examine it, we are doomed to perpetual frus-tration. This is because “the life-world is so unproblematic that weare simply incapable of making ourselves conscious of this or thatpart of it at will” (Habermas, 1992a, p. 110). If we try to identifyand examine the cultural knowledge it contains, we see it vaporizejust as it starts to assume shape: “No sooner has it been thematized,and thereby cast into the whirlpool of possible questions, than itdecomposes” (Habermas, 1996, p. 23). To study the lifeworld’s con-tours would be as impossible as a bigmouthed bass levitating out


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of a Minnesota lake and making a leisurely survey of the water’ssurface in mid-air to discern where the juiciest minnows are swim-ming or where the most predatory anglers are moored.

Again and again, across all his writing, Habermas emphasizes theenclosing totality that is the lifeworld. In The Theory of CommunicativeAction (1987a), it is “a horizon behind which we cannot go . . . a total-ity with no reverse side” (p. 149); in The New Conservatism (1989a),“a background totality” and “a totalizing vortex” (p. 120); in Post-metaphysical Thinking (1992b), “a porous whole of familiarities thatare prereflexively present” (p. 16); in The Philosophical Discourse ofModernity (1987b), “an intuitively known, unproblematic and unan-alyzable, holistic background” (p. 298); and in Between Facts andNorms (1996), “a penetrating, yet latent and unnoticed presence . . .a sprawling, deeply set, and unshakable rock of background assump-tions, loyalties, and skills” (p. 22). Although the lifeworld representstotal enclosure, there are times we can breach its fences or stumbleacross gaps in its walls. Habermas allows the possibility of our becom-ing aware of the false knowledge, distorted assumptions, and self-destructive presuppositions the lifeworld contains when we areconfronted with a particular situation that demands action.

In action situations—times when events impel us to respond—the lifeworld’s horizon becomes a little less hazy and a segment ofit “comes into view” (Habermas, 1987a, p. 132). Since adulthoodentails “the constant upset of disappointment and contradiction,contingency and critique in everyday life” (1996, p. 22), there areplenty of opportunities for us to confront these different lifeworldsegments. Situations constantly arise—jobs disappear, relationshipsfall apart, neighborhoods change, friends betray us (or we betrayfriends), those close to us fall seriously ill or die—that demandresponses. As we work through these situations, we realize that life-world knowledge and assumptions are perhaps not the accurate,dependable realities we had imagined them to be. Even thoughthe total lifeworld is preflectively known and “given to the experi-encing subject as unquestionable” (1987a, p. 130), we can exam-ine that segment of it thrown into sharp relief by the need to setgoals and take action. Habermas writes that “in the light of anactual situation . . . the relevant segment of the lifeworld acquiresthe status of a contingent reality that could also be interpretedanother way” (p. 131).


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When adults deal with situations that demand actions fromthem, glimpses of the lifeworld become possible. Pieces of it alsocome into view in the process of what Habermas calls symbolicreproduction. The lifeworld is always being renewed and recreatedas we involve ourselves in communicative action. On the one hand,“in fallibly interpreting a given situation” (Habermas, 1996, p.324), communicative actors (that is, adults trying to understandwhat’s happening to them and hoping to reach agreements withothers in the situation) “must draw from resources supplied bytheir lifeworld and not under their control” (p. 324). On the otherhand, “actors are not simply at the mercy of their lifeworld. For thelifeworld can in turn reproduce itself only through communicativeaction” (p. 324). Its assumptions are strengthened and confirmedwhen we invoke them to explain our decisions and actions.

In communicative action our assumptions and intuitive preun-derstandings are all the time being put to the test as we are askedtacitly to accept suggestions, justifications, and social arrangementsthat are presented to us as obvious fact. Habermas believes that “incommunicative action, which requires taking yes/no positions onclaims of rightfulness and truthfulness, no less than reactions toclaims of truth and efficiency, the background knowledge of thelifeworld is submitted to ongoing tests across its entire breadth”(Habermas, 1987b, p. 321). Every time we are asked to nod ourheads—literally or figuratively—to something that someone elsesays, or to the way a situation is framed for us, the lifeworld is putto a brief examination.

As any totalitarian leader sooner or later realizes, reproducing aclosed system of ideas is a slippery business. Inevitably, unforeseenevents eventually intervene to take the reproductive process out ofthe leadership’s control. This is even more the case where what isbeing reproduced—understandings, assumptions, intuitions—is sym-bolic rather than material. It is much easier to reproduce materialphenomena such as organizational rituals, institutional behaviors, oreconomic and community conventions than it is to control andreproduce shared meanings. Of course, “the symbolic reproductionof the lifeworld and its material reproduction are internally interde-pendent” (Habermas, 1987b, p. 322). After all, the smooth func-tioning of social institutions depends on people sharing an unspokenagreement to their legitimacy. Overall, then, the lifeworld strives to


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ensure continued social solidarity through the transmission of “cul-turally ingrained background assumptions” (1987b, p. 298).

The symbolic reproduction of the lifeworld fulfills three impor-tant functions—“the propagation of cultural traditions, the inte-gration of groups by norms and values, and the socialization ofsucceeding generations” (Habermas, 1987b, p. 299). As a result ofthis reproduction, people draw from the lifeworld “consensual pat-terns of interpretation,” “normatively reliable patterns of social rela-tions,” and “the competencies acquired in socialization processes”(p. 314). The first function of cultural reproduction “secures thecontinuity of tradition and a coherency of knowledge sufficient forthe consensus needs of everyday practice” (p. 343). Thus the cul-tural frame in which we operate structures the way that “newly aris-ing situations can be connected up with existing conditions in theworld” (p. 343) and helps us decide what is the most appropriateresponse to a situation. The second function of social integration“takes care of the coordination of action by means of legitimatelyregulated interpersonal relationships and lends constancy to theidentity of groups” (p. 344). This function ensures that we learnthe habitual ways our group solves problems, sets goals, resolvesdisputes, and so on. The third function of socialization “securesthe acquisition of generalized capacities for action for future gen-erations and takes care of harmonizing individual life histories andcollective life forms” (p. 344). Through socialization our individ-ual identity becomes bound up with allegiances to groups, com-munities, and nation states.

Cultural reproduction, social integration, and socialization onlyhappen as we communicate with each other. In this way the life-world “reproduces itself only through ongoing communicativeactions” (Habermas, 1996, p. 32). All the speech acts and linguis-tic utterances we produce as we strive to understand each other’sbehaviors and try to come to communicative agreements serve toreproduce the lifeworld. So communicative action and lifeworldreproduction are contemporaneous: “The network of commu-nicative action is nourished by resources of the lifeworld and is atthe same time the medium by which concrete forms of life are re-produced” (Habermas, 1987b, p. 316).

As we have seen, points of entry into examining the lifeworlddo exist. Adults can analyze situations demanding action, and they


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can also study the numerous everyday agreements they implicitlymake as part of lifeworld reproduction. Habermas believes thatphilosophy can help examine these points of entry to discern whenthe lifeworld is being invaded by the steering mechanisms ofmoney and power. Hence, one important task of philosophy is to“contribute to making us conscious of the deformations of the life-world” (Habermas, 1992b, p. 50). An example of this would bechallenging the unspoken assumption that competition is a nat-ural survival mechanism. Habermas quotes as an example of ideo-logical domination “the idea that the capacity to compete on aninternational scale—whether in markets or in outer space—is indis-pensable for our very survival” (Habermas, 1987b, p. 367). Such abelief is “one of those everyday certitudes in which systemic con-straints are condensed” (p. 367). Philosophy might also alert us tothe infiltration of the concept of retooling into the lexicon of adulteducation. Retooling the workforce through adult education turnsadult education into something that always serves the system sinceworkers are trained to perform the job functions the economy needsto work more efficiently. Retooling also dehumanizes people byviewing them as machines since retooling, like recalibration, issomething one does to nonhuman objects.

The invasion of the lifeworld by administrative and economicsystems is a matter of extreme concern to Habermas. He refers toan “arising awareness of the infiltration of capital into areas of lifewhich until now were shielded from it by tradition, and withinwhich the values of capitalist society (competition for status, pur-suit of gain, instrumentalization of existence) were not hithertodominant” (Habermas, 1992a, p. 66). When we study situations ofcrisis in our lives, we can sometimes see just how much our instinc-tive ways of understanding have become shaped by capitalistic orbureaucratic ways of thinking. An intimate relationship falls apartand the partners lament their wasted emotional investment. Par-ents having trouble with their children are told to establish a seriesof contracts specifying duties, obligations, and expectations. Wedivide our days into work time, relaxation time, quality time, orfamily time, or we regard our marriages as work teams geared tothe achievement of particular goals such as raising children or buy-ing a house. All these examples show how “the foundations of alifeworld that is already rationalized are under assault” and alert


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us to the fact that “what is at stake is the symbolic reproduction ofthe life-world itself” (p. 117).

Habermas’ analysis of the crises facing contemporary society issomber reading. The decline of the public sphere, the threat tocivil society, and the invasion of the lifeworld are manifestations ofa broader loss of social solidarity—in his view the truly endangeredresource on the planet (Habermas, 1996, p. xlii). In Theory andPractice (1973), a collection of essays mostly published in the 1960s,he sounds a distinctively Marcusean note in his warning of howfalse needs and false freedom separate people from each other:“Scurvy and rickets are preserved today in the form of psychoso-matic disturbances, hunger and drudgery in the wasteland of exter-nally manipulated motivation in the satisfaction of needs which nolonger ‘are one’s own’” (p. 196). In contemporary society the“anonymous compulsion of indirect manipulation” extends fur-ther and further to invade “ever more extensive domains of sociallife” (p. 196). Today social compulsions are felt as inner needs:“Directives lose their form of commands and are translated bymeans of sociotechnical manipulation in such a manner that thoseforced to obey, now well integrated, are allowed to do, in the con-sciousness of their freedom, what do they must” (p. 196).

The loss of solidarity and co-option of our inner needs by com-merce and administration are compounded by the collapse of ourbelief that reason can be used to create a better world. In BetweenFacts and Norms (1996) Habermas declares that the twentieth cen-tury “has taught us the horror of existing unreason” and that, as aresult, “the last remains of an essentialist trust in reason have beendestroyed” (p. xli). With the rejection of reason, “politics has lostits orientation and self-confidence before a terrifying background”(p. xli). Ecological crises, north/south disparities, ethnic strife, andthe collapse of socialism have all cast doubt on people’s capacityto use reason to build a humane world. But this is just the surfaceof the problem. In Habermas’ view, “the unrest has a still deepersource, namely, the sense that in the age of a completely secular-ized politics, the rule of law cannot be had or maintained withouta radical democracy” (p. xlii). The prospects of such a democracyemerging are dim indeed as long as the tendencies outlined in thischapter remain unchallenged.


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However, all is not lost in Habermas’ view. In particular it is adisastrous mistake to replace a loss of trust in reason with a hurtlinginto unreason. If reason can be rescued from its co-option bymoney and power, then it can be used to build a more participatorydemocracy. Democracy is Habermas’ response to domination and,as we shall see in the next chapter, he ties his interest in adult learn-ing and his theory of communicative action to the idea of a trulydeliberative democracy. Such a democracy would help counter “thedepoliticization of the mass of the population” and go some way toreviving a public realm currently “confined to spectacles and accla-mation” (Habermas, 1970, p. 75). Like Marcuse, Habermas sees theuncritical acceptance of the technocracy thesis—“a perspective inwhich the development of the social system seems to be determinedby the logic of the scientific-technical progress” (p. 105)—as lyingat the core of domination.

Technocracy acts as a force for domination by promoting thebelief that life is principally a matter of technical adjustment. Allproblems—emotional, spiritual, and social—are fixable by theapplication of technology. This “dominant, rather glassy back-ground ideology, which makes a fetish of science, is more irre-sistible and farther-reaching than ideologies of the old type” (1970,p. 111) because it secures “the repression of ‘ethics’ as such as acategory of life” (p. 112). Hence, technocratic consciousness turnsall questions concerning how to live into instrumental, rather thanethical or moral, questions. People set goals and make decisionsas purely technical matters. As a result, “the reified models of thesciences migrate into the sociocultural lifeworld and gain objectivepower over the latter’s self-understanding” (p. 113). Anticipatingcurrent controversies over genetic engineering by three decades ormore, Habermas sketches out a frightening extension of techno-cratic domination in which “behavioral control could be institutedat an ever deeper level tomorrow through biotechnic interventionin the endocrine regulating system, not to mention the even greaterconsequences of intervening in the genetic transmission of inher-ited information” (p. 118).

As he sees societies growing larger and increasingly differenti-ated, Habermas offers the hypothesis that “the more complex thesystems requiring steering become, the greater the probability ofdysfunctional effects” (Habermas, 1989a, p. 51). For example, pro-


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ductive forces become devoted to destructive ends, invasions aimedat establishing peace produce terroristic backlashes, and attemptsto plan society (transportation, health, education, welfare) backfiredisastrously inducing more disruption than existed before. The in-creasing commercialization and bureaucratization of life generates“disturbances, pathological side-effects” (Habermas, 1992a, p. 112)in the lifeworld “and interferes with its symbolic reproduction”(p. 246). Although superficially reassured by technocratic logic,people are subject to a deeper unease. Habermas writes of the waysthat “social conflicts . . . have been shifted over into the psycho-logical and physical domains and internalized” (1989a, p. 59). Peo-ple are plagued by the unspoken sense that economic, ethnic, orecological disasters are likely to explode at any moment.

The preconscious awareness that pathological disturbances liejust under the surface of existence induce a feeling of hopeless-ness, what Habermas characterizes as “a certain fin-de-siecle mood,a sense that time is running out” (Habermas, 1989a, p. 189). In hisview the dread that lurks, dimly sensed, in the periphery of life isreflected in the popularity of postmodern analysis. To him it is noaccident that the theories gaining in influence today are those thatillustrate how the forces from which modernity draws its utopianself-confidence “are in actuality turning autonomy into depen-dence, emancipation into oppression, and reason into rationality”(p. 51). In a theoretical alternative to the nihilism these theoriescan induce, Habermas draws on the affirmative strain of criticaltheory he admires Marcuse for preserving to propose a new modelof democracy based on the innate need of humans to commu-nicate. It is to his belief in the power of adult learning, his theory ofcommunicative action, and his reaffirmation of the democraticdream that we now turn.


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Chapter Nine

Learning Democracy

In the previous chapter, you, the reader, may have been wonderingexactly what happened to adult learning and education. In thatchapter’s detailing of the crisis tendencies Habermas sees in West-ern societies, the roles of adult learning and education in counter-ing these received only passing attention. But now their place in thesun has arrived. In this chapter I want to outline the centrality ofadult learning to Habermas’ view of social evolution, to examinehow his ideas of human discourse and communicative action entaila theory of adult learning, and to explore how for him the mostimportant adult learning project of all—learning democracy—works to limit the destructive effects of the attacks on the publicsphere, civil society, and the lifeworld.

The Centrality of Adult LearningIn the preceding chapter, I acknowledged Habermas’ liking for theaffirmative strain of critical theory represented by Marcuse who atone point declared “no one could be more of a democrat than Iam,” while also recognizing that “the true conditions of democracystill have to be created” (Marcuse, 1970, p. 80). Like Marcuse,Habermas has as one of his central projects the understanding andcreation of the conditions for democracy. Central to this effort isadult learning. Habermas’ hope for regenerating democracy re-sides in adults’ capacity to learn; in particular, to learn how to rec-ognize and expand the democratic processes inherent in humancommunication. Adult learning, for Habermas, is integral to com-munication and, therefore, contemporaneous with existence. Since

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we all communicate, learning is a naturally occurring phenome-non that can only be prevented by some act of suppression initi-ated by an external force. In a world in which adults regularlycommunicate, the most intriguing question for Habermas is nothow adult learning happens but how it doesn’t happen! If learn-ing is such an omnipresent part of adulthood, then the problemthat needs explaining is why it isn’t everywhere. To quote a typi-cally Habermasian turn of phrase, “not learning, but not-learning isthe phenomenon that calls for explanation” (Habermas, 1975,p. 15).

The explanation Habermas proposes as to why adults are notcontinually and conspicuously learning is that contemporary polit-ical and economic systems, and their various steering media,attempt to foreclose the possibility of any learning that challengessystemic imperatives. Since learning involves asking “why?” it ispotentially very threatening to the system and must be controlled.If learning to ask why cannot be stopped at the outset, then the sys-tem tries to divert the energy generated by learning into channelsthat confirm the legitimacy of the existing order. But make no mis-take about it, in Habermas’ view learning is what adults do all thetime, unless something actively prevents this from happening.Adults have “an automatic inability not to learn” (1975, p. 15) thatis a defining feature of adult existence. Although he works withina different intellectual tradition than many of those adult educa-tors who research self-directed learning, Habermas agrees withtheir contention that adults learn continuously and in a variety ofsettings. This continuous learning happens whether or not theseadults are participating in formally sponsored and arranged pro-grams of education.

Reflexive Adult Learning and Social EvolutionIn Legitimation Crisis (1975), Habermas sketches out two broadforms of learning—nonreflexive and reflexive—a distinction takenup by Mezirow in his influential 1981 article. Nonreflexive learn-ing is learning without a critical element. It is learning to submitwithout resistance to rules of debate, argument assessment, anddecision-making processes that the dominant culture favorsbecause they cut off any prospect of challenge to that culture by

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severing the connection between decision making and any deepermoral inquiry. Hence “non-reflexive learning takes place in actioncontexts in which implicitly raised theoretical and practical valid-ity claims are naïvely taken for granted and accepted or rejectedwithout discursive consideration” (Habermas, 1975, p. 15).

Reflexive learning, on the other hand, is learning tinged withcriticality. In this kind of learning, we learn to question and chal-lenge everyday practices or social arrangements by discussing withothers the extent to which these can be justified. Reflexive learn-ing is, therefore, inherently communicative. It involves comparingour experiences and opinions with those of other adults, and con-sidering with them the merits of the evidence proposed to justifydifferent beliefs or courses of action. Habermas expresses this idearather convolutedly: “Reflexive learning takes place through dis-courses in which we thematize practical validity claims that havebecome problematic or have been rendered problematic throughinstitutionalized doubt, and redeem or dismiss them on the basisof arguments” (1975, p. 15). Put more simply, reflexive learninginvolves us talking over with others the conflicting evidence avail-able to us regarding whether or not things have been ordered thebest way they could be in society, and whether or not corporations,bureaucracies, and governments act with the best interests of thepeople at heart.

The extent to which adults engage in reflexive learning is nota matter of chance but rather one of social determination. Itdepends on “whether the organizational principle of the societypermits (a) differentiation between theoretical and practical ques-tions and (b) transition from non-reflexive (pre-scientific) toreflexive learning” (1975, p. 15). For example, learning to ques-tion the distribution of resources or the right of certain groups torule can be blocked or prevented outright if the lifeworld holdssuch learning to be deviant, immoral, or unpatriotic. In this waywhat look like self-directed learning projects are not individuallydetermined at all but socially framed. Indeed, as a general rule,the development of an individual’s reflective capacities is alwaysculturally bounded; “since the cognitive development of the in-dividual takes place under social boundary conditions, there is acircular process between societal and individual learning” (Haber-mas, 1979, p. 121).


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One dimension of reflexive learning that does not appear muchin the adult learning literature, but that is important to Habermas,is evolutionary learning. Habermas sees such learning as the over-all lever for societal development, “the fundamental mechanismfor social evolution in general” (Habermas, 1975, p. 15). Withouta socially sanctioned engagement in learning, society remains instasis. In reviewing historical and anthropological evidence, Haber-mas observes that “the initial state of archaic societies . . . coulditself be changed only by constructive learning on the part ofsocialized individuals” (Habermas, 1979, p. 121). Consequently, itis in a society’s best interests (assuming, of course, that evolutionis a good thing) to organize evolutionary learning processes as wellas relying on their natural emergence.

Two conditions need to be in place for evolutionary learning tooccur: “On the one hand, unresolved system problems that repre-sent challenges; on the other, new levels of learning that havealready been achieved in world views and are latently available butnot yet incorporated into action systems and thus remain institu-tionally inoperative” (Habermas, 1975, p. 122). The case of globalwarming represents one contemporary opportunity for evolution-ary learning to occur, racial tension another, the African continent’sAIDS epidemic a third. In each situation an unresolved system prob-lem has emerged that clearly represents an enormous challenge tohumankind. These are all system problems because they are eithercaused by the actions of people in a system run for economic profitor are naturally occurring but exacerbated to crisis levels by thedesire of some for profit or the refusal of others in power to admita problem exists. Some adults in civil society—activists, concernedprofessionals, intellectuals, and so on—have forced awareness ofthe need to learn new ways of responding to these crises into thepublic sphere. President Bush’s refusal to sign the Kyoto Accord,race riots in downtown Cincinnati or Oldham, England, and theprevarications of pharmaceutical companies over whether or notto abandon their exorbitantly profitable pricing policy regardingthe sale of AIDS-treatment drugs in poor third-world economieswere all granted media space in the weeks and months surround-ing my writing this paragraph.

At the same time that these “unresolved system problems” haveemerged, activists have offered a variety of responses to them. To


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take the example of global warming, in the United States therehave been proposals for alternative energy policies, for a move tosmaller hybrid cars, for a massive increase in investment for pub-lic transportation, for more stringent requirements for fuel ad-ditives, for punitive taxation on those who buy gas guzzlers, and for an acceptance that air conditioning is a costly luxury—not anecessity—in the desert climate of California and Arizona. All theseproposals have been successfully sidelined by the oil, gas, nuclear,and auto industries, and by an administration that includes promi-nent former figures in these industries amongst its senior publicofficials. However, Habermas is obstinate in his belief in the hopefulpossibilities of learning and looks to history, particularly the moveof archaic, preindustrial societies to organize productive systems, toprovide evidence of a general theory of evolutionary learning.

To him it is clear that social progress depends on the organi-zation and institutionalization of learning processes. As a societycoheres into a unit with a shared sociocultural identity, it ensuresthat “learning processes are socially organized from the start, sothat the results of learning can be handed down” (Habermas,1979, p. 171). This explains the establishment of the education sys-tem, models of apprenticeship, and the transfer of knowledge inchurches, families, and friendship networks. Such learningprocesses “are from the outset linguistically organized, so that theobjectivity of the individual’s experience is structurally entwinedwith the intersubjectivity of understanding among individuals”(p. 173). We learn in communities as social beings, and our devel-opment of knowledge depends on our ability to understand whatothers are telling and showing us. The ways I interpret my ownexperiences as an adult educator are not, therefore, idiosyncraticbut rather draw on concepts and frameworks learned through con-versation with other adult educators in person and through theirwritings.

Learning systems can also be created that institutionalize normsof critical skepticism as does, for example, the concept of criticallyreflective education for professional practice. Habermas’ defini-tion of this kind of practice involves the mix of credible practicalexperience and sociopolitical awareness that seems to me to char-acterize much writing on critically reflective adult education.Hence, adult education for critical professional practice is “the


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combination of competence and learning ability to permit thescrupulous handling of tentative technical knowledge and the con-text-sensitive, well-informed willingness to resist politically the dubi-ous functional application or control of knowledge that onepractices” (Habermas, 1970, p. 47). One is skilled in one’s area ofpractice, in other words, but also skilled in recognizing when one’spractice is being put at the service of the system and against theinterests of its less powerful members.

Adult Learning as Communicative ActionHabermas’ theory of communicative action is probably his mostfamous idea and, along with the invasion of the lifeworld, the partof his work best known in adult education. What is forgotten some-times is just how central adult learning is to this theory. Habermas’ideas on communicative action “start from the trivial assumptionthat subjects capable of speech and action cannot help but learn”(Habermas, 1992a, p. 165). He moves, sometimes confusingly,between a normative view of communicative action as a chosen wayof reaching agreement with the fewest possible distortions andmanipulations, and communicative action as an unavoidableempirical reality existing almost irrespective of adults’ intentions.He summarizes this latter view by declaring that “in everyday com-municative practice, sociated individuals cannot avoid also employ-ing everyday speech in a way that is oriented toward reachingunderstanding” (Habermas, 1994, p. 101). Hence, “whenever wemean what we say, we raise the claim that what is said is true, orright, or truthful” (p. 102). It is not that “people want to act com-municatively but that they have to” (p. 111). Childrearing, educa-tion, friendships, work relationships, community action—“theseare elementary social functions that can only be satisfied by meansof communicative action” (p. 111).

Once again, the interesting question is less the conditionsunder which adults learn and more the conditions that preventthis wholly natural and predictable process from happening. Ifadults are not learning as they communicate, then something isgetting in the way. Given that learning is, as we have seen, a socialprocess dependent on our membership of speech communities inwhich we pursue intersubjective understanding, it is the lack of


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such communities that is often the problem. In Habermas’ view,“reaching mutual understanding . . . depends on contexts charac-terized by a capacity for learning, both at the cultural and personallevel” (Habermas, 1996, p. 324). These contexts exist in societiesthat exhibit “a discursive mode of sociation” but are preventedfrom emerging in societies that encourage “dogmatic worldviewsand rigid patterns of socialization” (p. 324). In contexts that allowcommunicative action, the possibility of who will actually do themost learning is always open; “within a process of reaching mutualunderstanding, actual or potential, it is impossible to decide a pri-ori who is to learn from whom” (Habermas, 1990, p. 26). This is acommon idea in adult education, usually expressed in the hopethat the roles of teachers and learners will move around in an adultlearning group.

What exactly is communicative action? In Volume One of hismassive The Theory of Communicative Action (1984), Habermas sayssuch action happens when attempts by people to communicate “arecoordinated not through egocentric calculations of success butthrough acts of reaching understanding” (p. 286). When we actcommunicatively, we try to step out of our normal frames of refer-ence to see the world as someone else sees it. We make this effortbecause we live in a world full of different cultures, agendas, andideologies. In a sense, living with others continually forces per-spective-taking upon us. Life keeps presenting situations to us inwhich we need to reach common agreement with other people.

The communicative action such agreements call for is premisedon the disposition to try and understand another’s point of view.Habermas writes that “in communicative action participants are notprimarily oriented to their own individual successes; they pursuetheir individual goals under the condition that they can harmonizetheir plans of action on the basis of common situation definitions”(1984, p. 286). The ability to put aside egocentric calculations ofsuccess in a society run by money and power is a learned ability.Indeed, in Habermas’ view, learning to do this is the adult learningtask, made doubly difficult by the existence of schooling systemsrun according to the competitive ethic and by the spread of civic orfamilial privatism documented in the last chapter.

In Habermas’ writings on the dialogic conditions necessary forcommunicative action to occur, there is a direct connection to adult


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education’s traditional concern with discussion as the uniquelyadult teaching and learning method. In communicative interactions“the participants coordinate their plans of action consensually, withthe agreements reached at any point being evaluated in terms ofthe intersubjective recognition of validity claims (Habermas, 1990,p. 58). What we agree to or decide on in a conversation is based onour acknowledging that what others are saying has merit. Haber-mas writes that when people talk through an issue and come toshared understanding or decision, they “make three differentclaims to validity in their speech acts . . . claims to truth, claims torightness, and claims to truthfulness” (1990, p. 58). In fact, “everyspeech act involves the raising of criticizable validity claims aimedat intersubjective recognition” (1996, p. 18).

Habermas’ writings on communicative action have a function-alist, even a legalistic tone that can be off-putting to adult educa-tors. Communicative action, validity claims, intersubjectiverecognition, and understanding—these are hardly terms we use todescribe our daily practices to each other. When opening a con-versation about how much milk we need to get today, or what is thebest way for the United States to beat Portugal in a World Cup soc-cer match, or who is going to meet the school bus this afternoon,I would never think I was invoking something called validity claims.I might, after a moment or two of thinking about it, acknowledgethat my partners in conversation are trying to communicate, so wecould legitimately call ourselves communicative actors. And I mightalso grant the possibility that we’re trying to understand eachother’s positions and come to common agreement. But raisingvalidity claims? What’s that got to do with getting milk?

Yet Habermas contends that raising validity claims is intrinsicto every human conversation. In his view, “anyone acting commu-nicatively must, in performing any speech action, raise universalvalidity claims and suppose that they can be vindicated” (Haber-mas, 1979, p. 2). Validity claims are the basic conditions of speechthat people strive to meet when they attempt to communicate ingood faith with each other. If I struggle to understand what you’resaying and try to make my comments to you as comprehensible aspossible in return, then I am communicating in good faith. If Ithen try to connect to, build on, and take account of what you havesaid as I respond to you, I am likewise sincerely trying to develop


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some shared understandings. What Habermas calls communica-tive action—two or more people trying to come to an understand-ing or agreement—is premised on the good faith effort of thoseinvolved to speak in the most truthful, best informed way they can.Hence, “whenever we mean what we say, we raise the claim thatwhat is said is true, or right, or truthful” (Habermas, 1994, p. 102).In communicative action then, “speaker and hearer know implic-itly that each of them has to raise the aforementioned validityclaims if there is to be communication at all (in the sense of actionoriented to reaching understanding)” (Habermas, 1979, p. 4).

Two things are striking about this idea. First, not all conversa-tional interactions are examples of communicative action. Indeed,in a society dominated by money and power, a great deal of commu-nication will be the exact opposite of this kind of talk. People willspeak to exploit or dominate others or to justify and support a systemthat legitimizes this domination. True communicative action is a rar-ity in life, something that deliberately needs to be fostered. This iswhere the role of adult education and the actions of adult educatorsbecome relevant. Within the dialogic tradition of adult education,there is a belief that speaking in the way that Habermas describes ascommunicative is something that adults can learn. There are, fur-thermore, the assumptions that adult educators can teach these ori-entations to speech, that they can create learning opportunities inwhich these ways of speaking are honored and practiced, and thatthey can do their best to model their commitment to these dialogicforms in their own educational actions. A book I wrote with StephenPreskill, Discussion as a Way of Teaching (Brookfield and Preskill, 1999),is premised on the idea that dispositions of democratic discussion—the sorts of reciprocity and mutuality endemic to Habermas’ notionof validity claims—can be taught and learned.

The second thing that is striking about communicative action ishow its unabashed hope in the possibility of two or more peoplecoming to understand each other’s views and then agreeing on acommon course of action stands firmly against postmodernism.From a postmodern perspective, Habermas is engaged on some-thing of a fool’s errand. If postmodernism teaches us anything (andteaching us something is too directive an activity for many in this ori-entation), it is that language can never be trusted. Logocentrism—the assumption that a central, unequivocal, discoverable meaning


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exists at the core of speech and writing—is completely rejected.Words are viewed instead as slippery, opaque, and contextual. Froma postmodern perspective, the thoughts I have can never be ex-pressed in words in exactly the way I think them. Furthermore,despite my best intentions to craft words that convey my meaningsas transparently and accurately as possible, the meanings that youtake from them will never be exactly what I intend. Your experi-ences and history will always skew how you understand the words Iuse and ensure that you invest them with connotations and mean-ings I never intended.

Despite the postmodern critique of his theory of communica-tive action, Habermas steadfastly refuses to ditch modernity’sdream of using human reason to create a more humane world.Part of that dream is clearly bound up with the possibility of adultslearning to speak to each other in honest and informed ways sothat they can hold democratic conversations about importantissues in a revived public sphere. Since, to Habermas, learning totalk in this way is the most important hope we have for creating ajust society, there could hardly be anything more important insocial life than adult education. Adult educators who possess theability and inclination to create conversational settings in whichpeople learn to base their communication on validity claims areprecious resources indeed from Habermas’ point of view. Beforegetting carried away regarding the planet-saving role of adult edu-cation, and particularly before getting any deeper into the natureof validity claims, I want to leave the theory of communicativeaction for a moment (but only for a moment) to return to the cen-trality of adult learning in Habermas’ work, in particular to the wayhe interprets ego development as an adult learning process.

Adult Learning and the Developmentof Moral ConsciousnessAs well as viewing reflexive adult learning as the lever of social evo-lution, and arguing that adults learning to act communicatively iscrucial to reviving the public sphere (and thereby expandingdemocracy), Habermas also sees the development of moral con-sciousness as a learning process that occurs primarily in adult life.This conviction is rooted in Habermas’ early formulations of the


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interests people have in developing different kinds of knowledge.In Knowledge and Human Interests (1971), he presents his influen-tial categorization of technical, communicative, and emancipatoryknowledge, arguing that emancipatory knowledge—“analyses thatfree consciousness from its dependence on hypostatized powers”(1971, p. 313)—is a function of people’s capacity to become reflec-tive. To Habermas, “the emancipatory cognitive interest aims at thepursuit of reflection” (p. 314).

Without a capacity for critical reflection, we are unable to sep-arate our identity from the steering mechanisms of money andpower that have invaded the lifeworld. Our sense of who we arethen becomes constructed in terms of how successfully our actionsexemplify systemic imperatives. For example, we treat relationshipsas profit-making activities to which we can apply a cost-benefit analy-sis of the emotional dividends that accrue to us. In this way of think-ing, a relationship is successful if its participants enjoy a good rateof return on their emotional investment in the form of ego aggran-dizement, sexual favors, or receipt of unconditional positive regard.Becoming reflective is a necessary hedge against this tendency.

If ego development is a learning process that crosses the life-span, then it is in its adult stages that the evolution of full moralconsciousness potentially occurs. In Moral Consciousness and Com-municative Action (1990), Habermas cites Kohlberg’s work on adultmoral development to support his (Habermas’) contention thatbecoming moral is signaled by “the transition from normativelyregulated action to practical discourse” (p. 170). In other words,the development of morality is indicated by people’s ability todetach themselves from everyday thinking and decide (after par-ticipating in discussions with others about the ethical justificationsof various approaches to situations) how to act in ways that are notideologically predetermined. Moral consciousness emerges as aperson “passes into the post-conventional stage of interaction” inwhich “the adult rises above the naïveté of everyday life practice”(p. 160). Passage into this postconventional stage is marked by theadult becoming aware of life’s contingencies, by her recognizingthe contextuality of beliefs, and by the ability to understand thatthought is ideologically shaped. To Habermas, “only at the post-conventional stage is the social world uncoupled from the streamof cultural givens” (p. 162).


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What does it mean for an adult to be “uncoupled from thestream of cultural givens”? Here Habermas harks back to Marcuse’semphasis on the need for distance, privacy, and isolation as neces-sary to the development of critical consciousness. If people are toact morally, they need to learn how to view their immediate con-cerns without the pressures put upon them by the imperatives ofthe situation or the force of “common sense.” One way to do thisis to talk with others who have different experiences of these con-cerns, or who interpret the same concern in markedly differentways. As the adult “becomes a participant in discourse, the rele-vance of his experiential context pales” (1990, p. 161), and itbecomes easier to separate out the generic elements of a situationfrom its context-specific features.

The “relevance of the experiential context” is often judged asan unalloyed good in adult education circles (experience beingthought of as something positive that should always be tied tolearning), so it is interesting to read this critique of its potentialfor domination. Here Habermas is pointing out the dark side ofexperience, the way its familiarity and immediacy can foreclosenew and surprising understandings. Discussing different perspec-tives on experience helps people think “independently of contin-gent commonalities of social background, political affiliation,cultural heritage, traditional forms of life, and so on” so that they“can now take a moral point of view, a point of view distanced fromthe controversy” (p. 162).

In an interview in Autonomy and Solidarity (1992a), Habermasclarifies the meaning of a moral point of view, seeing it as an aware-ness of the contextuality of one’s own beliefs and values. Hence “tosee something from a moral point of view means that we do not ele-vate our own understanding of the world or our self-understandingto the status of criteria for universalization of a mode of action”(Habermas, 1992a, p. 269). We recognize the provisionality of ourconvictions even as we act as if they were certitudes. Those holdingmoral viewpoints are open to “test their universalizability from theperspective of all the others” (p. 269) that pertain to that particu-lar situation. Acting morally, in other words, involves a degree ofcircumspection regarding the correctness of one’s own actions, nomatter how carefully these have already been scrutinized.


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Habermas is careful to acknowledge that he is describing onlythe possible development of adult moral consciousness and thatits existence is relatively rare. He admits that “empirical investiga-tions come out strongly against the idea that all adult members ofa society, even of modern Western societies, have acquired thecapacity for formal-operational thought (in Piaget’s sense) or forpost-conventional judgments (in the sense of Kohlberg’s theory ofmoral development)” (1992a, p. 165). But he does hold out thepossibility that widespread independent moral thought could atsome point form a hedge against the lifeworld’s occupation. In thishe is once again practicing that affirmative brand of Marcuseancritical theory he finds so appealing. In his words, “I maintain only. . . that individuals can develop structures of consciousness whichbelong to a higher stage than those which are already embodiedin the institutions of their society” (p. 165).

In speaking of the widespread possibility of adults across a so-ciety being able to move to a postconventional stage of reasoning,Habermas is exhibiting a universalistic emphasis that has arousedstrong criticism. He is aware of the intellectual unfashionability ofhis position, acknowledging that “I am defending an outrageouslystrong claim in the present context of philosophical discussion;namely, that there is a universal core of moral intuition in all timesand in all societies” (1992a, p. 201). However, he is not arguing thatthis core assumes the same shape in all contexts. What he does con-tend is that these moral intuitions spring from the same origin—”from the conditions of symmetry and reciprocal recognition whichare unavoidable presuppositions of communicative action” (p. 201).In other words, communicating in good faith is an inherently moralact based on certain presuppositions. The giving of reasons foraction is one such presupposition, the readiness to grant to othersthe same communicative rights as oneself, another.

We must always remember, though, that Habermas’ position ofmoral universalism is, paradoxically, a rejection of cultural univer-salism. He defines a universalistic value orientation as one entailingthe rejection of the universal validity of one’s own beliefs. A morallyuniversalistic outlook means that “one does not insist on universal-izing one’s own identity” and that “one does not simply exclude thatwhich deviates from it” (1992a, p. 240). Instead of a xenophobiccertitude, “one relativizes one’s own way of life with regard to the


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legitimate claims of other forms of life” (p. 240). One also “grantsto the strangers and the others, with all their idiosyncracies andincomprehensibilities, the same rights as oneself” (p. 240). Haber-mas believes that with the adoption of such a perspective “the areasof tolerance must become infinitely broader than they are today”(p. 240).

The Theory of Communicative ActionAs we saw in the previous section, communicative action is actionundertaken by adults to reach understanding and agreement.Indeed, my phrase “action taken by adults” probably implies moreintentionality than Habermas intends. In social living, such actionis unavoidable. As Habermas declares in a 1994 interview, “I neversay that people want to act communicatively but that they have to”(Habermas, 1994, p. 111). In his opinion, “in everyday commu-nicative practice, sociated individuals cannot avoid (also) employ-ing everyday speech in a way that is oriented toward reachingunderstanding” (p. 101). As long as we live in association with oth-ers, and as long as we accept that our lives are better without con-stant conflicts and disputes, then communicative action isrequired. This is because “there are elementary social functionsthat can only be satisfied by means of communicative action. Ourintersubjectively shared, overlapping lifeworlds lay down a broadconsensus, without which our everyday praxis simply couldn’t takeplace” (p. 111). Rearing children, cooperative action of any kind,solving problems “without the costly recourse to violence” (p. 111)are all examples of these social functions in his view.

At the heart of human speech lies the desire for mutual under-standing. In Habermas’ view, “reaching understanding is the in-herent telos of human speech . . .the concepts of speech andunderstanding reciprocally interpret one another” (1984, p. 287).The point of speech, indeed in many ways the point of life, is tocome to understandings with others. Such understandings allowus to build relationships and alliances, thereby giving our livesmeaning. When people agree on something, they enjoy “the inter-subjective mutuality of reciprocal understanding, shared knowl-edge, mutual trust, and accord with one another” (1979, p. 3). Thiskind of agreement represents the sort of solidarity that Habermas


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earlier described as the most endangered resource on the planet.The solidarity arising from agreement also underlies social action.Without agreement, the intersubjective energy that propels col-lective action in the pursuit of common goals cannot develop. Assuch it is integral to the kind of political will formation so neces-sary to democracy.

In Habermas’ view, reaching agreement is inherently demo-cratic since true agreement springs from the freely given assent ofthe parties concerned. Hence, “a communicatively achieved agree-ment . . . cannot be imposed by either party (whether instrumen-tally via intervention or strategically via undue influence)” (1984,p. 287). Embedded in authentic human communication—espe-cially that concerned with how to live as a community—are certaindemocratic norms. First, as we have seen, “coming to an under-standing requires the rider uncoerced” (1984, p. 392). Those in-volved must feel that the understanding has been reached of theirunforced volition. Second, coming to an understanding is basedon the truthful giving of reasons for various actions. It is “a processof mutually convincing one another in which the actions of partic-ipants are coordinated on the basis of motivation by reason” (1984,p. 287). Third, “coming to an understanding means that partici-pants in communication reach an agreement concerning the valid-ity of an utterance; agreement is the intersubjective recognition ofthe validity claim the speaker raises for it” (1987a, p. 121). Whenwe agree to something, we implicitly acknowledge that the views ofothers involved in the agreement have some validity.

The concept of validity claims features strongly in the earlyHabermas, particularly in Communication and the Evolution of Soci-ety (1979) and in Theory and Practice (1973). Learning to assess thevalidity of speech is for him a crucial adult learning project. Asalready discussed, Habermas believes adult learning happens pri-marily through speech. In social systems, “subjective learningprocesses take place and are organized within the framework ofordinary language communication” (1973, p. 12). When we en-gage in “ordinary” conversation, we are continually learning toassess the validity claims embedded within another person’s words.Validity claims are the unspoken assumptions we make regardingthe truth and sincerity of another person’s comments. Is the per-son talking to us interested in stating her views as clearly as she can


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so we have a good chance of understanding what she’s trying tosay? Or is she appearing to be open and honest so as to get us onher side in order to make it easier for her to influence us for herown ends?

Habermas believes that each time we enter into a conversationwe are continually judging how far we can trust what our partneris saying. In effect, we are assessing a number of validity claimsimplied in the other’s attempt to speak to us. Habermas arguesthat “in action oriented to reaching understanding, validity claimsare ‘always already’ implicitly raised” (1979, p. 97). Furthermore,“these universal claims . . . are set in the general structure of pos-sible communication” (p. 97). Whenever people, irrespective oftime or place, try to reach understanding, they act according tothese claims. Hence “in communicative action, the validity basis ofspeech is presupposed” (p. 118).

What are these validity claims Habermas identifies? The first is“the comprehensibility of the utterance” (1973, p. 18). We ask howclear and understandable are the words the other person is using.This is the claim of comprehensibility, and it requires speakers tostrive to use language that stands the best chance of being under-stood by hearers. When we hear a sentence, we also try to gauge“the truth of its propositional component” (p. 18); that is, whetheror not the words used accurately represent some state of affairs inthe wider world. This is the second claim of truth. Is the speakerdoing her best to give us the fullest possible information about thematter under consideration?

The extent to which the speaker sticks to the rules of talk thatprevail in our community is a third feature we pay attention to. Asentence is judged partly according to “the correctness and appro-priateness of its performatory component” (1973, p. 18); that is,whether or not it is stated in a form that is familiar and likely to beunderstood the way it is intended. Communication is impossiblewithout people observing the intuitively understood norms andrules governing speech, the broadly accepted road map of talk. InHabermas’ view, “all communicative actions satisfy or violate nor-mative expectations or conventions” (1979, p. 35), and when wespeak to someone we continually judge their adherence to these.This is the claim of rightness. Finally, we need to know that the person speaking to us is sincerely interested in reaching


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understanding. This is the claim of authenticity, particularly “theauthenticity of the speaking subject” (1973, p. 18). We must be ableto trust that others in conversation sincerely wish to make them-selves understandable and to understand us in turn.

If meaningful conversation is to occur, these four validity claimshave to be satisfied. For Habermas, “communicative action can con-tinue undisturbed only as long as participants suppose that thevalidity claims they reciprocally raise are justified” (1979, p. 3).When speakers involve themselves in communicative action—whenthey talk to each other with the intention of reaching commonunderstandings—they rely on the fact that the four claims could bedemonstrated if any of the speakers requested this of any of the oth-ers. Each person assumes that, if necessary, the others in the con-versation could show how they are trying to satisfy these claims. Soin any genuine speech “there is a common conviction that any valid-ity claims raised . . . could be vindicated because the sentences,propositions, expressed intentions and utterances satisfy corre-sponding adequacy conditions” (1979, p. 4).

Learning to recognize when, or how far, these validity claims arebeing met is an unending adult learning project, one crucial todemocratic life. If we haven’t learned to distinguish between pro-pagandizing and a genuine statement of deeply held views, or to dis-cern those times when apparent truthfulness masks coercive intent,then our ability to defeat subtle demagoguery within the publicsphere is severely curtailed. It is in everyday communicative actionthat adults learn to recognize the kinds of sophistry and manipula-tion of speech that, on a larger scale, diminish the public sphere.The chair of a community gathering who, in giving the “sense of themeeting,” carefully slants his summary to highlight his preferredview; the adult education facilitator who sums up the main points ofa discussion and gives an account that some in the room barely rec-ognize; the spouse or lover in a supposedly open conversation whoskillfully manipulates the outcome so that the blame for any maritalstress or interpersonal tension always rests on the other’s shoulders—all these communicative actions are violating one or other of thevalidity claims Habermas identifies as endemic to communicativeaction. In learning how to detect when these violations are happen-ing, and how to bring these to people’s attention, adults prepare


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themselves for conversations in the public sphere. They show thatthey are learning communicative competence.

One of Habermas’ ideas that has drawn criticism is his empha-sis on the giving of reasons as a universal feature of speech. To him“even the most fleeting speech act offers, the most conventionalyes/no responses, rely on potential reasons” (1996, p. 19). If asked,we could supply the reasons why we propose something or respondto another’s proposal in the ways we do. Reasons, therefore, “arethe primary currency used in a discursive exchange that redeemscriticizable validity claims” (p. 35). The reasons given for variousproposals or assertions can, of course, be false, wrong, exploitative,or immoral. But the giving of reasons is universal. We may appealto authority (do this because I tell you to) or supernatural powers(do this because the rain god will be displeased if you don’t), butwe always cite reasons to justify our beliefs or actions to ourselvesand others. Speakers engaged in communicative action assume theresponsibility to give grounds for the validity claims implicit in what-ever they say. Habermas summarizes the responsibilities entailed bycommunicative action as follows: “The speaker, in a cognitivelytestable way, assumes with a truth claim, obligations to provide cer-tain grounds, with a rightness claim, obligations to provide jus-tification, and with a truthfulness claim, obligations to providetrustworthy” (1979, p. 65).

Nowhere is this giving of reasons more important than in de-liberations within a democratic public sphere. As we have seen,Habermas believes a speech community is also a democratic com-munity, and the rules that govern communicative action are there-fore the same as those informing the democratic process. Iflearning to participate in communicative action is a universal adultlearning project, then learning democratic process is its politicalcounterpart. When we learn to talk to each other in ways that arecomprehensible, truthful, appropriate, and authentic, we are learn-ing an analog of democratic process. This is because the standardsand rules with which we learn to judge the rightness of our partici-pation in a conversational community are very similar to those weadopt when assessing whether or not a democratic decision hastrue legitimacy. In both instances, “participating actors must con-duct themselves cooperatively and attempt to reach an agreementabout their plans (in the horizon of the shared lifeworld) on the


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basis of common (or sufficiently overlapping) situation interpre-tations” (1992b, p. 79). In pursuing agreement as citizens or as“ordinary” speakers, adults apply communicative rationality, “therationally motivating force of achieving understanding” (p. 80).Communicative rationality is centered on the fulfillment of valid-ity claims, on being able to explain how one’s assertions and pro-posals are comprehensible, sincere, truthful, and appropriatelyexpressed. Communicative rationality thus “provides a standardfor evaluating systematically distorted forms of communication andof life” (p. 50).

The same criteria of validity that we apply to judge the effec-tiveness of our communicative efforts can be applied to assess thelegitimacy of our social, political, and economic institutions. Afterall, these institutions are determined by our communicative efforts,and if participants within them do not act understandably, sin-cerely, truthfully, and appropriately, then they can easily becomeinstruments of ideological manipulation. For Habermas, then,“those aspects of validity that undergird speech are also importedto the forms of life reproduced through communicative action”(1996, p. 4). The most important of these forms is the democraticway of life.

A Discourse Theory of DemocracyIn a rare (and welcome) burst of lyricism concerning the limits ofcommunicative rationality, Habermas acknowledges that “com-municative reason is of course a rocking hull—but it does not gounder in the sea of contingencies, even if shuddering in high seasis the only mode in which it ‘copes’ with these contingencies”(1992b, p. 144). Perhaps the most turbulent waves—the tsunamiof communicative action—are produced when people try to workwith the inherently contradictory and uncontrollable politicalarrangement we call democracy. Nonetheless, from Theory andPractice (1973) to The Postnational Constellation (2001a), Habermasis consistent in his argument that the rules of discourse repre-sented by communicative reason are also the basis of democraticprocess.

Adult educators will recognize these discourse rules as informing the conduct of many adult discussion groups. The rules


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Habermas specifies are “that (a) all relevant voices are heard, (b) the best of all available arguments, given the present state ofour knowledge are accepted, and (c) only the non-coercive coer-cion of the better argument determines the affirmations and nega-tions of the participants” (Habermas, 1992a, p. 260). In otherwords, good discussion, and therefore good democratic process,depends on everyone contributing, on everyone having the fullestpossible knowledge of different perspectives, and on everyonebeing ready to give up their position if a better argument is pre-sented to them. Taken together, these rules constitute an idealwhich citizens can use to judge the effectiveness of political delib-erations, and adult educators can use to judge the validity of adulteducation programs and adult learning activities.

Of course the problem with this ideal is that judgments as towhich voices are relevant, how relevance itself is to be determined,how we decide which are the best arguments, and who estimatesexactly what is the present state of our knowledge are all highlycontentious. If we’re not careful, we end up asking those in author-ity to decide these things, privileging the very experts Habermas istrying to restrain.

Not surprisingly, Habermas is quick to recognize this danger.In an interview in Justifications and Applications (1993), he voices hisregret at coining the term “ideal speech situation,” calling it “aterm whose concretistic connotations are misleading” (p. 164). Heacknowledges that “language is also a medium of domination andsocial power” that “serves to legitimate relationships of organizedforce” (Habermas, 1988, p. 172) as well as being the mediumthrough which democracy can be learned. He continually pointsto the ways in which ideology works “to conceal the asymmetricaldistribution of chances for the legitimate satisfaction of needs”(Habermas, 1975, p. 27), particularly the chances different peoplehave to join a deliberative speech community. If a society maintainsitself by subtly discrediting or marginalizing certain voices, then“communication between participants is then systematically dis-torted or blocked” (p. 27). However, Habermas does not believethat these drawbacks inevitably render rules of discourse as useless.To reject these rules because they can be co-opted and manipulatedby dominant groups is to throw the baby of communicative reasonout with the bathwater of potentially distorted communication.


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For Habermas the ideal rules of discourse, embedded as they arein the universal processes of speech, offer the best hope of keepingdemocratic forces alive. We can use these rules to determine whethera speech community (of, say, elected representatives) is reaching itsdecisions in a fair and morally defensible way. Since the members ofsuch a community are all those affected by the matters being dis-cussed, we can check whether or not they are all present. We canassess how far “all motives except that of the cooperative search fortruth are excluded” (1975, p. 108) in the community’s deliberations.Deliberations conducted around “a common interest ascertainedwithout deception” in which “the constraint-free consensus permitsonly what all can want” (p. 108) are admittedly rare. But their raritydoes not render these rules irrelevant.

A genuine attempt to adhere to these rules, while recognizingthat people will always fall short of them, is what grants legitimacy toadult educational processes and to the broader workings of democ-racy. A democratic decision—what should comprise the curriculumof a graduate adult education course, the way in which wealth shouldbe distributed among the population, or whether or not the citizenryshould authorize its government’s invasion of another country—onlyhas legitimacy if it is reached after an attempt to follow the rules ofdiscourse.

From a discourse theory standpoint, the fact that a decisionrepresents the will of the majority is no guarantee of its legitimacy.Habermas echoes Fromm’s and Marcuse’s warnings about the dan-gers of automaton conformity and repressive tolerance. What iscrucial in determining the legitimacy of a majority decision is theway this is reached, particularly whether or not it has “an internalrelation to the competitive quest for truth” (Habermas, 1992a,p. 256). If the standards already discussed are observed when peo-ple come to a decision, then Habermas believes we can call it rea-sonable. Such a decision is reasonable because it represents “therationally motivated, although fallible, result of a discussion whichwas prematurely ended under the pressure of the need for a deci-sion” (p. 256).

Between Facts and Norms (1996) is the book in which Habermas’discourse theory of deliberative democracy is most fully laid out,though its elements are addressed much earlier in books such asToward a Rational Society (1970). Habermas argues that “according


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to discourse theory the success of deliberative politics depends . . .on the institutionalization of the corresponding procedures andconditions of communication, as well as on the interplay of insti-tutionalized deliberative processes with informally developed pub-lic opinions” (Habermas, 1996, p. 298). The rules of discourseimplied in the simplest speech acts provide a model for the formalworkings of democratic process and for debate about these withinthe public sphere.

At its most basic level, democratic decision making represents“a consensus arrived at in discussion free from domination” (Haber-mas, 1970, p. 7). However, as societies grow ever larger and morecomplex, a domination-free consensus arrived at through townmeetings or other inclusive community conversations becomesincreasingly impossible to achieve. In the twenty-first century, West-ern societies are “pluralistic societies in which comprehensive world-views and collectively binding ethics have disintegrated” (Habermas,1996, p. 448). Legislative procedures become increasingly con-centrated in elite circles and distanced from the everyday lives ofcitizens. Existing laws, and the ways these are made, can also bechanged at any moment by lawmakers.

In this situation, where the populace is often deeply alienatedfrom the legislative process, how can the laws that are produced bythat process have any validity? It is Habermas’ contention that “thedemocratic procedure for the production of law evidently formsthe only postmetaphysical source of legitimacy” (Habermas, 1996,p. 448). In other words, the only hope we have that people willaccept as legitimate a decision they don’t agree with is if they seethat decision as clearly the result of genuinely democratic deliber-ations. As we have already seen, these democratic proceduresthemselves arise out of communicative action. Hence, from theviewpoint of discourse theory, “the discourse principle acquires thelegal shape of a democratic principle” (p. 458) because it works“to legally institutionalize those communicative propositions andprocedures of a political opinion and will formation” (p. 458). Theonly chance that laws have of being perceived by the populace aslegitimate is if they are democratically arrived at. If political actorsacknowledge the validity claims that Habermas sees as endemic tohuman speech, then citizens will regard the decisions they makeas rational; that is, as being in the best interests of those they affect.


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Thus, “discourse theory explains the legitimacy of law by means ofprocedures and communicative presuppositions that, once theyare legally institutionalized, ground the supposition that theprocesses of making and applying law lead to rational outcomes”(p. 414).

These are weighty roles for discourse and democracy. In Haber-mas’ words, “the democratic process bears the entire burden of legit-imation” (1996, p. 450) where the law is concerned. Citizens actunder “the promise that democratic processes of law making jus-tify the presumption that enacted norms are rationally acceptable”(Habermas, 1996, p. 33), and people carry the expectation thatdemocratically decided laws are fair, contingent, and revisable. Thisforegrounding of democratic process as the guarantor of legisla-tive legitimacy raises significant questions for adult education. Ifpeople are to judge whether or not “democratic processes of lawmaking justify the presumption that enacted norms are rationallyacceptable” (p. 33), then they need to learn ways of recognizingwhen democratic processes are being conscientiously followed.This is not just a matter of learning democratic theory. Peopleneed to experience the contradictions and tensions of democracy,and to learn how to navigate through these while also learning theuncomfortable ontological truth that they are often unnavigable.Learning democracy is a matter of learning to live with ambiguityand contingency as much as it is learning how to apply delibera-tive decision-making procedures. As such, it connects directly tothe development of postconventional judgment that Habermasidentifies in Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (1990) asan adult learning project.

Habermas’ work on adult political learning explores threeavenues through which adults can learn democratic proceduresand dispositions. First, societies can institutionalize evolutionarylearning processes so that knowledge of democratic practices canbe handed down from generation to generation. In Communicationand the Evolution of Society (1979), Habermas argues that organizedlearning processes are successful if they result in “the productionand utilization of technically and practically useful knowledge”(p. 173). Democratically speaking, this means that adult educationmust give plenty of opportunities for people to learn about thetechnical aspects of democratic procedures and the typical, pre-


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dictable diversions and blockages that arise when working withinthese. Welton (2000) argues that initiatives such as the CanadianCitizens’ and Farm Forums of the 1940s and 1950s represented“institutionalized opportunities to exist and act as citizens, as par-ticipants in public life” (p. 214).

As far as formal adult education is concerned, learning de-mocracy suggests that the negotiation of curriculum and of class-room process among members of the learning community shouldconstitute the norm rather than the exotic exception. The kindsof negotiations over purposes and activities that are the commonconversational currency in community action groups wouldbecome prominent in adult education programs. If this happened,then adult education as part of civil society could constitute a mini-laboratory in which people could learn and practice democraticdispositions that could then be transferred into the public sphere.Such protocols and dispositions comprise what Welton (2003)describes as the “pedagogics of civil society . . . the optimal learn-ing conditions that enable open, uncoerced and respectful com-munication amongst citizens who engage each other towards thecreation of a common world able to attend to the needs of its citi-zens” (p. 198).

Everyday conversations represent a second avenue for learningdemocratic process. Seeing things from another point of view, tak-ing different perspectives, suspending judgment about somethingcontentious until we hear what the other person has to say aboutit—these are all communicative acts we engage in during conver-sations about apparently nonpolitical matters. In discussion groupswithin both liberal and radical adult education, many of theseeveryday communicative behaviors are explicitly identified as theones around which discussion should be organized. For example,Bridges (1988) urges discussion participants to learn how to builda moral culture for discussion; Burbules (1993) sketches out thenecessary communicative virtues adults need to learn if they are totalk across differences; and Brookfield and Preskill (1999) outlinedispositions of mutuality and reciprocity that must be learned ifdemocratic discussion is to occur.

Eduard Lindeman is the American adult educator who hasargued most prominently for democratic discussion as the quin-tessential adult educational method. In papers such as “The Place


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of Discussion in the Learning Process,” “Group Work and Democ-racy,” and “Democratic Discussion and the People’s Voice” (all inBrookfield, 1987b) and in books such as The Meaning of Adult Edu-cation (Lindeman, [1926] 1961) and The Democratic Way of Life(Smith and Lindeman, 1951), Lindeman’s vision of democracy andhis emphasis on the need for adult citizens to learn a number ofdemocratic disciplines through discussion participation have dis-tinctly Habermasian overtones. Although Lindeman cannot be lo-cated within critical theory’s central discourse, his concern to helpadults learn conversational processes that are central to democraticfunctioning does anticipate Habermas’ work in this area. As Welton(2003) points out, “commitment to educating the communicativelycompetent citizen has deep roots in adult education traditions”(p. 207), and one of the deepest of these is Lindeman’s work on dia-log and discussion. The rules and dispositions of discourse proposedby Welton himself—inclusiveness, openness, lack of coercion, toler-ance, tact, civility, and solidarity—parallel in many ways the demo-cratic disciplines outlined by Lindeman.

Habermas’ work on the development of moral consciousnessoffers clues towards a third, somewhat contradictory, approach tothe project of learning democracy. As discussed earlier in this chap-ter, Habermas sees the development of postconventional judgment,and the consequent tolerance of multiplicity and contextuality thisentails, as something that is paradoxically learned when people areremoved from their experiential context (see Habermas, 1990, pp. 161–162). A separation from immediate experience allowsadults to reflect back on this—usually in conversation with others—in a way, and with a critical edge, that is difficult in daily life. This isthe essence of adult critical reflection.

Critical reflection, in Habermas’ view, is chiefly an adult phe-nomenon. He believes we cannot talk about critically reflectivelearning until uncritical, unreflective learning has occurred, usu-ally at earlier stages of life. In his opinion, “we are not able to re-flect back on internalized norms until we have first learned tofollow them blindly through coercion imposed from without”(Habermas, 1988, p. 170). So critical reflection in adulthooddepends on an uncritical assimilation of norms in childhood andadolescence. One cannot reflect in a vacuum, there must alwaysbe something to reflect about. Learning about oppression or ide-


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ological domination, for example, is not just a theoretical exercise.It only has true meaning when we have lived through the conse-quences of domination, felt the cracks in the smooth façade of theadministered life. Until adult life grants us enough diverse ex-periences to provide the comparative data for critical reflection,we are unable to judge the accuracy or benevolence of rules and per-spectives learned in childhood. Reflection, therefore, “is condemnedto operate after the fact” (Habermas, 1988, p. 170). However, thisdoes not render it irrelevant since “operating in retrospect, it un-leashes retroactive power” (p. 170). This is the retroactive powerof criticality, the capacity to “become critically aware of the mean-ing of . . . the sequence of identifications and alienation” (p. 183)that comprises our life histories.

This vision of adults separating themselves out of everyday lifeand joining with others to discuss what it means to live democrati-cally is at the core of residential adult education. Residential expe-riences offer participants the distance and ready-made speechcommunity necessary for them to reflect on their experiences withdemocratic process. The residential workshops of the HighlanderCenter in Tennessee, in which activists learn from each other’s ex-periences of building democracy in an oppressive world, representan attempt to reflect critically on democratic participation (usingappropriately dialogic approaches) that is very much in tune withHabermas’ thinking on this matter.

For many North American adult educators, Habermas remains theonly show in town where critical theory is concerned. In this chap-ter and in Chapter Eight, I have tried to illuminate the reasons forhis prominence in our field. Although his body of work is intimi-datingly wide, certain themes close to adult educators’ concernsrepeatedly emerge. There is the belief that adult learning is theengine of social change and that understanding its dynamics is asimportant as understanding mechanisms of production andexploitation. There is also the contention that critical reflection isa learning process observable mostly in adulthood, and a con-sequent emphasis on the possibility of adults reflecting back onideological norms and behaviors internalized uncritically in child-hood. Along with this is the stress on the way standards of con-versation derived from communicative action can provide a


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methodological ideal against which dialogically inclined adult edu-cators can gauge their effectiveness. Finally, there is the connec-tion constantly returned to between the behaviors and dispositionsof communicative action and the democratic process. Drawing onboth Marxist and pragmatic traditions, Habermas reaches the sameconclusion as Lindeman regarding the workings of democracy—that it must be understood as a lifelong learning process in whichlearning to live with contingency and contradiction is of equalimportance to learning a set of procedural arrangements. In thenext chapter this radical democratic fusion of ideology critiqueand pragmatic experimentation, and the place this fusion mightoccupy in the field of adult education, is explored further throughan analysis of the work of several contemporary African Americanintellectuals, particularly Cornel West.


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Chapter Ten

Racializing Criticality

In the introduction to his influential anthology on African Ameri-can thought, Philosophy Born of Struggle, Leonard Harris observes that“the works of Afro-Americans are trapped, as it were, in a labyrinthwhere even the walls are white” (1983, p. ix). As readers will by nowbe well aware, this applies just as much to the philosophical tradi-tion of critical theory as to analytic philosophy, empiricism or, ide-alism. Criticality’s theory is undeniably Eurocentric, in Yancy’s (1998)words “the history of white men engaged in conversation with them-selves” (p. 3). Although conducted as an intellectual project for theliberation of all humankind, critical theory’s location in White malediscourses means that it may well function as yet one more “site of white cultural hegemony, sustained and perpetuated in terms ofthe particularity of race and gender related institutional power”(pp. 8–9). This is why Yancy argues that “there is a need to de-centerEuro-American philosophy” (p. 11). Yancy believes that “African-American philosophers, within the context of American racism,share a certain Othered experiential reality in which the motif of race,its historical reality, its cultural dimensions, its heinous weight, itspolitical importance, and its philosophical problematicity, is bothexplicitly and implicitly operative” (p. 11). Given that White Euro-pean critical theorists are unlikely to reframe critical theory in theservice of a different racial group, some African American intellec-tuals have tried to interpret this tradition in terms that serve AfricanAmerican interests. Others feel these interests are best served byinstigating a separate Africentric discourse.

In the present chapter I respond to Yancy’s call to de-centercritical theory by examining how some African American intellec-tuals (in particular, Lucius T. Outlaw, Jr. and Cornel West) draw

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explicitly on critical theory but reinterpret its contributions froma racialized (to use Outlaw’s term) African American perspective.These theorists believe that concepts prominent in the critical tra-dition have a utility in furthering African American interests butthat these ideas must be viewed through, and fundamentallychanged by, the prism of African Americans’ experience of racism.For adult educators of all racial identities, critical theory can in-form our understanding of how adults learn to assimilate, andsometimes to resist, racist ideology. As Outlaw (1983b) observes, itis contradictory for a theory that purports to help adults liberatethemselves from injustice not to address how ideology buttressesracial oppression. In his view, if it is to have any meaning in a multi-cultural society, critical theory “must be reviewed critically to deter-mine why, as both theory and praxis, it has dealt so inadequatelywith the matter of race/ethnicity and racism in the American socialorder” (p. 119). Outlaw’s project is to sculpt an analysis of emanci-pation “in terms that are drawn from both the critical theoreticaltradition of Marxism and from the tradition of Black Nationalism”(Outlaw, 1983b, p. 118).

Using Outlaw’s work, along with that of Karenga and West, Iwish to examine how the factor of race intersects with those learn-ing tasks of adulthood—challenging ideology, overcoming alien-ation, contesting hegemony, unmasking power, and so on—thatare the focus of this book. However, I should acknowledge that theintersection of critical theory and Black Nationalism explored indifferent ways by the writers discussed in the present chapter is buta small corner of the multilayered quilt of African Americanthought. Many African American intellectuals (including promi-nent adult educators) explicitly reject Eurocentric critical theoryas a perspective that can be used to understand the African Amer-ican experience. In their view, this experience (including the ex-perience of African Americans learning and teaching within adulteducation) must be understood in terms drawing on African culturaltraditions; in other words, from an Africentric perspective. In workssuch as Afrocentricity (Asante, 1998a) and The Afrocentric Idea (Asante,1998b), the Africentric perspective articulates a position derivedfrom an analysis of the indigenous elements of African culture.

To adult educators Scipio Colin III and Talmadge Guy, “Afri-centrism is a sociocultural and philosophical perspective that


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reflects the intellectual traditions of both a culture and a continent.It is grounded in the seven basic values embodied in the SwahiliNguzo Saba” (Colin and Guy, 1998, p. 52). The Africentric positiontoward the field of adult education “asserts that adult educationalpolicies, practices, experiences, philosophies, ethical issues, theo-ries, and concepts must be considered and evaluated on the basisof the perspective and experience of African Ameripeans/AfricanAmericans” (p. 52). In particular, an Africentric perspective explic-itly excludes the understanding of adult education from a Euro-centric theoretical perspective such as critical theory.

In the white-walled labyrinth described earlier by Harris (atleast where critical theory is concerned), all paths lead to a preoc-cupation with class, rather than race or gender. Critical theory asexplored by the White males whose works have been reviewed inthe previous chapters foregrounds class analysis. Adult identity isunderstood primarily as a function of the adult’s class location andrelationship to the means of production. Adult alienation is viewedas the adult’s separation from the process and products of her orhis labor. Ethnicity emerges as a factor from time to time (as inMarx’s analysis on the hostility of English workers to Irish immi-grants) but is not generally treated as a separate analytical category.The role of racially oppressed groups as catalysts of revolutionarychange also receives occasional attention, as in Marcuse’s view ofthe Black Power movement as a powerful force for disturbing thesmooth façade of the administered life. In general, though, race isnot featured consistently as a central, separate category of analysisin the work reviewed so far. Instead, the class reductionist perspec-tive “tacitly assumes that racism is rooted in the rise of modern cap-italism” (West, 1993c, p. 262).

There is no doubt that important interconnections do exist be-tween class and race. In Dusk of Dawn, his autobiographical analysisof the concept of race, Du Bois ([1940] 1968) describes how his jour-ney to Africa helped him “more clearly to see the close connectionbetween race and wealth,” in particular “the income-bearing valueof race prejudice” (p. 129). But the racist conceptualization andtreatment of people as subhuman based on physical characteristicssuch as facial features, hair type, and skin pigmentation constitutesa dimension of oppression that cannot be explained away purely bythe economic benefits such practices accrue for the dominant class.

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In recent times African American philosophers such as Boxhill (1983,2001) and Karenga (1983) have argued that omitting race from crit-ically inclined theory ignores the empirical reality of contemporarymulticulturalism and the persistence of racist oppression. In Box-hill’s view, “class analysis must either be scrapped altogether, oramended with a qualitatively new and theoretically independent con-ception of race, if it is to be of any use in understanding multiracialsocieties” (1983, p. 108). To Karenga, racial and ethnic particularities“are constitutive of human and social identity and in a racist socialcontext, determine life-chances and social treatment” (p. 219). Con-sequently, in his view, “it is incorrect and analytically unproductive”(p. 219) to view racial oppression as a subcategory of class oppres-sion. Because African Americans are reduced “to a permanentunderclass set off from the rest of the American working class by sys-tematic racist discrimination (they) are not simply alienated fromtheir labor as workers, but also as Blacks” (p. 217). Consequently,“racial alienation joins class alienation as a fundamental problem ofBlack self-consciousness” (p. 217).

The pertinence of race has not been lost on adult educators ofa critical cast who have argued that scholarship and practice in thefield mirrors and perpetuates the racism of the wider society. Dur-ing a symposium at the 1992 Adult Education Research Conferencein Saskatoon, Canada, several participants protested vigorously overthe way literature in the field—particularly the then newly publishedtext Adult Education: Evolution and Achievements in a Developing Fieldof Study (Peters, Jarvis, and Associates, 1991)—excluded non-Whitenon-male voices. This galvanized some theorists’ energies and led toa series of important edited collections that focused on illuminatingracism and sexism within the field and on widening its frame ofinquiry (Hayes and Colin, 1994; Guy, 1999; Peterson, 2002; Shearedand Sissel, 2001).

The emergence of the African American preconference pre-ceding each annual meeting of the Adult Education Research Con-ference (AERC) is another indicator of the way in which race hasbeen foregrounded as a crucial factor in adult education researchand scholarship. Other AERC preconferences have been arrangedon the perspectives and experiences of Indigenous People, the AsianDiaspora, and Chicanas(os)/Latinas(os). The racial membership ofadult classrooms, the racial composition of the adult education pro-


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fession generally and its professoriate in particular, the racist char-acter of certain adult education policies, practices, and instructionalmaterials, the racial positionality of authors and conference pre-senters, the racially skewed valorization of certain figures as “experts”in the field, the dominance of theories and concepts that appearrace-blind, and the racial make-up of gatekeeper boards, commit-tees, and editorial collectives are now emerging motifs in criticallyinclined adult educational discourse.

Considerations on Racializing Critical TheoryBefore engaging with the racializing of critical theory, however, Iwish to make some important caveats. The first concerns the selec-tion of an African American perspective as the racial perspective toexplore most deeply. Why de-center critical theory through this lensrather than a Latino, Native American, Hmong, Pakistani, Chinese,or Aboriginal perspective? Where does the work of a CaribbeanMarxist like C.L.R. James fit in, or that of the Afro-Caribbean Britishcultural studies theorist, Stuart Hall? Are the philosophical world-views of indigenous, First Nation peoples not equally deserving ofattention? Are we in danger of erecting a racial hierarchy that priv-ileges certain previously excluded bodies of thought over others?

My choice of the African American perspective as the one to ex-plore in depth in this chapter springs from my own practice as anadult educator. As a White Englishman, the group of non-Whiteadult learners with whom I have had the most contact over the yearsis that of African Americans. So I should be honest about having aselfish, vested interest in understanding how my own practice—sculpted in a society 3,000 miles on the other side of the Atlanticocean—is constantly widened, challenged, and problematized byworking with this group of learners. Part of my effort to becomeaware of the condescension and unacknowledged racism implicitin my own practice has involved me reading in the literature re-viewed in this chapter. In this regard I have been fortunate enoughto have cotaught several times with the foremost Africentric adulteducation theorist in the United States, Scipio A. J. Colin III. Dr “C.”has been a valued mentor to me in guiding me through the multi-ple literatures of African American thought, though the misunder-standings I am guilty of are no responsibility of hers.


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My own positionality as an English male, and more specificallymy own racial membership as White, is an important element toacknowledge in this chapter. In their analysis of Black intellectuallife, Cornel West and bell hooks discuss the ways in which, accord-ing to hooks, “White theorists draw upon our work and our ideas,and get forms of recognition that are denied Black thinkers”(hooks and West, 1991, p. 36). She speaks of how “there is a feel-ing now that a White academic might take your idea, write aboutit, and you’ll never be cited” (p. 36). In the same conversation,West observes, “White scholars are bringing certain baggage withthem when they look at Black culture, no matter how subtle andsophisticated the formulations” (p. 36).

I have learned from Dr C. that the baggage of my racial mem-bership and identity means I cannot be an Africentric theoristwhose being, identity, and practice spring from African values, sen-sibilities, and traditions. I can appreciate the accuracy and explana-tory power of something like Du Bois’ concept of doubleconsciousness. In so doing I can reflect on how being both Africanand American means that one is “always looking at oneself throughthe eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of the worldthat looks on in amused contempt and pity” (Du Bois, 1995, p. 45).But though this may illuminate what some of my learners and col-leagues are experiencing, I can have no real understanding of whatthis means.

As a White Englishman, I have no experiential, visceral accessto the philosophy born of struggle that comprises the centraldimension of African American thought. My skin pigmentation,White privilege, and collusion in racism places me irrevocably andirretrievably outside the Africentric paradigm. I can learn from andhonor this scholarship. I can be grateful for the way it questionsand reformulates aspects of critical theory, or the way it shatters(in a helpful way) my own understandings and practices. But I cannever claim to work as an Africentric adult educator. No matterhow much I wish to honor this tradition, my racial membershipprecludes me making such a claim. In the words of a provocativevolume, it is problematic to be Teaching What You’re Not (Mayberry,1996).

My third caveat has to do with the positioning of this chapterwithin this book. After all, this chapter on racializing critical theory


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comes after nine chapters focused exclusively on its Eurocentricvariants. Conducting this discussion in Chapter Ten may appear aninstance of subtle (or maybe not so subtle) marginalization, rele-gating African American scholarship to the status of the exotic“other” in contrast to the Eurocentric center. The chapter could beseen as an example of the kind of repressive tolerance discussed byMarcuse in Chapter Seven, whereby an apparent embrace of a dif-ferent perspective serves only to neuter that same perspective.There could easily appear a suggestion of tokenism, or of intellec-tual colonialism, with critical theory raiding African Americanscholarship as a means of reinforcing critical theory’s prominence.Under the guise of appearing to honor African American intellec-tual traditions, such an effort would only marginalize African Amer-ican thought even further. So let me emphasize that one importantreason for writing this chapter is to urge interested readers to en-gage with the multiple bodies of African American scholarship andwith the expression of an Africentric paradigm on its own terms.This chapter is not just an exploration of important and interestingtheoretical perspective on critical theory, but a starting point for awhole new analysis.

Fourth, I want to say something about my adoption of Outlaw’s(1996) concepts of “raciation” and “raciality” (his words). To Out-law raciation and raciality are important and unavoidable socialfacts. They describe the way people’s racial histories and identitiesinform how they “organize meaningfully, give order to, and thusdefine and construct the worlds in which we live, our life-worlds”(Outlaw, 1996, p. 5). Raciality, ethnicity, and gender “are constitu-tive of the personal and social being of persons . . . they make upthe historically mediated structural features of human life-worldsand inform lived experience” (p. 174). Taking a racialized view ofa phenomenon, in Outlaw’s terms, means that we view it throughthe distinctive lens of a racial group’s experience of the world. Thischapter acknowledges the struggle against racism as a crucial ele-ment of African American raciality.

Outlaw emphasizes that raciality is a positive phenomenon, andhe stresses that “racialism neither is nor need become racism” (1996,p. 8), though keeping the two from conflating is sometimes a strug-gle. Racism comprises “sets of beliefs, images and practices that are ‘imbued with negative valuation’ and employed as modes of


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exclusion, inferiorization, subordination, and exploitation in orderto deny targeted racial or ethnic groups full participation in thesocial, political, economic, and cultural life of a political commu-nity” (p. 8). Racialism is the positive recognition of how the con-stitutive features of one’s lifeworld, one’s positionality and sense ofhistorical and cultural identity, comprise a set of preconscious fil-ters and assumptions that frame how life is felt and lived. Racial-ism’s valuation is positive, not negative. It recognizes thecontributions and particularities of one’s racial identity. We cancelebrate the constitutive elements of our and others’ raciality ina way imbued with generosity and recognition quite different fromthe brutal, negative celebration of one’s racism.

It is important to note that most philosophical discourse as aproduct of European, Enlightenment rationality is already racial-ized. To Outlaw (1996) philosophy has already engaged in “theracialization and coloring of reason” (p. xxx) by valorizing Euro-pean cultural modes of analysis within Harris’ “white walledlabyrinth.” As a branch of European philosophy, critical theory toois already racialized. This Eurocentric body of work represents aWhite, Enlightenment rationality and celebrates how this intellec-tual project is dedicated to the realization of a more humaneworld. In Outlaw’s terms, the current chapter is about re-racializ-ing critical theory, viewing it through an African American ratherthan Eurocentric lens.

We should always remember, too, that adult educational the-ory and practice is also already racialized. Andragogy, self-direc-tion, critical reflection, transformative learning—all the mostfrequently cited concepts that purport to define what is distinctiveabout the field and that comprise its dominant discursive bound-aries—are valued positively and identified mostly with scholarshipconducted by White American, European, and Commonwealthmales. Acknowledging that concepts and practices are racialized isnot to say they should be abandoned. After all, Davis, Outlaw,Karenga, West, hooks, and others discussed in this and the nextchapter do not abandon critical theory but rather reinterpret it toserve particular racial interests. But a racialized perspective meansthat adult education scholars should be much more intentional intheir efforts to trace the racial dimensions of the field’s dominantdiscourse.


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The Importance of TerminologyBefore exploring a racialized view of critical theory, a word should besaid about its terminology. Scholarship conducted by American phi-losophers of African descent is referred to by those same scholars ina number of different ways, each of which signifies an importantelement in that scholar’s analysis. The descriptors of African-Ameri-can philosophy (Yancy, 1998), Black philosophy (Hord and Lee,1995), Afrocentric philosophy (Asante, 1998a, 1998b), Kawaida(Karenga, 1983), African American philosophy (with no hyphen, seefor example Peterson, 2002), Africology (Outlaw, 1996), and Afri-centric paradigms (Colin, 1988, 2002) are not interchangeable. View-ing adult education through an Afro-centric paradigm is, in Colin’sview, not the same as viewing it through an Africentric paradigm.Colin points out that “for many scholars of the African Diaspora theconceptual connections between race (how they identify themselves)and knowledge production is extremely important relative to mean-ing, interpretation and analysis” (S.A.J. Colin, personal communica-tion, 2002). Thus, the use of the hyphen in African-American isobjectionable to many. As Colin puts it, “Some scholars of the Dias-pora don’t use the hyphen because they don’t view themselves as‘hyphenated Americans’ but rather as Africans in/of America” (S.A.J.Colin, personal communication, 2002).

The use of the hyphen in terms such as African-American, Afro-centric, or African-Ameripean also contradicts a tenet of the phi-losophy such terms are sometimes intended to illuminate. In theAfricentric paradigm, “a traditional value of African society . . . isan irrevocable bond between the members of the race and the col-lective whole” (Colin, 2002, p. 62). This bond rejects what is seenas the false dichotomy between individual and group identity. FromColin’s point of view, a hyphen is a punctuation device that empha-sizes the separation, rather than the interconnection, of two words.When those two words refer to racial and cultural characteristics,such as African and American, it implies for her a separation of iden-tities that is empirically false. Applied to her own theory of the needfor selfethnic reflectors among African Ameripeans, she writes,“This writer’s use of the term selfethnic without the hyphen reflectsthe underlying principles of influence and reciprocity that form


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the foundational basis of the relationship between African Ameri-peans and their race” (p. 62).

As you may have noticed above, Colin proposes the term Afri-can Ameripean to describe adult educators and adult learners ofAfrican descent living in the United States. For her, the use of theword African “denotes the primary genetic roots and land of ori-gin” of this group of people. The term Ameri “reflects the voluntaryassimilation with various Native American tribal societies (particu-larly Cherokee and Seminole),” and Pean “reflects the forced assim-ilation with various European ethnic groups, particularly the British,French, and Irish during the period of slavery in the United States”(Colin, 2002, p. 62). Consequently, Colin’s body of work on Afri-centric interpretations of adult educational theory, philosophy, andpractice consistently employs the term African Ameripean.

This usage, which challenges dominant notions of what consti-tutes a distinctly American identity, illustrates how the scholarly lan-guage we use to describe our work (in this case the work of adulteducators of African descent) is often contested. For example, in anedited collection in which she used this term (Colin, 2002), the pub-lisher inserted a note at the head of her chapter, in boldface, statingthat the term African Ameripean and other terms in this chapter werereflective of the Africentric perspective of its author. The statementwent on to say that the publisher did not condone the use of theterm, that it was used at the insistence of the author, and that thepublisher thought it best to let readers decide on the term’s applic-ability.

It is hard to imagine such a caveat being issued at the head ofa chapter in which the term andragogy—itself a new word gener-ated within adult educational discourse to describe particularitiesof adult educational practice—was used. There are no publisherdisclaimers, as far as I’m aware, of the use of new terminology inadult educational discourses around transformative learning orcritical reflection. Yet Colin is always very careful to follow schol-arly conventions of giving a precise rationale for her choice ofterms. In another publication (where no publisher disclaimer wasdeemed necessary), Colin and her coeditor explain their use ofterms as follows: “The term African Ameripean is used . . . becauseof the authors’ belief that terms such as colored, black, Negro,Afro-American, and African American are culturally inappropriate


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and historically incorrect” (Hayes and Colin, 1994, p. 3). It denotes“any person of African descent born in America” (p. 3) and thus de-scribes an important group of participants in many adult educationprograms.

Colin and Hayes then go on to explain their use of Africentricand Africentrism, rather than Afrocentric or Afrocentrism. Forthem, “Africentrism is a sociocultural and philosophical perspectivethat reflects the intellectual traditions of both a culture and a con-tinent” (p. 3). It is grounded in the seven basic values of Nguzo Saba(to use the Swahili term), one of which—Ujamaa—underpins JuliusNyrere’s exposition of an African socialism (Nyrere, 1968). In con-trast to Africentrism’s grounding in African cultural values, “Afro-centrism is considered by these authors to represent an integrationistperspective that incorporates elements of European traditions”(p. 3). So in adult educational discourse the presence, or lack of, ahyphen and the use of an “o” or “i” in Afro or Afri have importantimplications (to hark back to Colin’s terms quoted earlier) forknowledge production on race and adult education.

Connecting Critical Theoryto African American PhilosophyAlthough this chapter explores an African American perspective oncritical theory, it should be unequivocally stated that most of thewriters I review deny that there is any such thing as a unitary,African American philosophy. This is well illustrated in the inter-views in Yancy’s (1998) African-American Philosophers. In his intro-duction to the volume, Yancy eschews any “ontological essentialistfoundationalism that forms the sine qua non of African-Americanphilosophical identity and thought” (p. 10). About as far as he willgo is to observe that what emerges in his book is “a complex set ofphilosophical positionalities and thoughts exhibiting areas of com-monality and diversity broadly informed by, though not simply re-duced to, African-American culture” (p. 10). West (1998) declaresthere is no such thing as a general African American philosophythat somehow transcends history, though there is “a certain culturalresponse to the world” (p. 38) informed by a particular AfricanAmerican “deep blues sensitivity that highlights concrete existence,history, struggle, lived experience and joy” (p. 39). To Harris


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(1998), “African-American philosophy is simply the history ofAfrican-Americans engaged in doing philosophy . . . with consciousrecognition of the African-American heritage and the kinds ofissues and problems which that heritage emphasizes” (p. 214)—inparticular the heritage of struggle. Outlaw (1998) too points outthat “African-American philosophy does not refer to a single any-thing, but rather to a collectivity . . . to the philosophizing of per-sons who are Americans of African descent” (p. 313).

So to talk of African American philosophy as if it were a distinc-tive, unified body of work is inaccurate and condescending. Onewould not talk of British philosophy as if everyone born in GreatBritain philosophized in the same way. African American philoso-phy exhibits the same kind of subtlety, difference, and disagree-ments as does the philosophizing of any other group of people. Totake just one recent example, the emergence of critical race the-ory (Delgado, 1995; Crenshaw, Gotanda, Peller, and Thomas,1995) in legal studies has generated a vigorous intellectual debateamongst African American intellectuals (as well as in the widerworld) that in its energy, sophistication, and rigor parallels any-thing in the white-walled philosophical labyrinth. The relevance ofthis debate for Africentric adult education has been well summa-rized by Peterson (1999). There is also a wide-ranging debate with-in African American philosophical circles surrounding the validityof the Africentric philosophical paradigm that illustrates a rangeof principled positions on the issue (see for example Hountondi,1983; Serequeberhan, 1991; Appiah, 1997, 2001).

So as Outlaw (1998) maintains, “There is nothing automaticallyconveyed about their philosophizing when we say that there areAfrican-Americans who philosophize” (p. 314). The African Amer-ican theorists discussed in this chapter represent but one of manyphilosophical orientations evident amongst African American intel-lectuals. They have been chosen because they have drawn explic-itly on ideas in critical theory to interpret and illuminate aspectsof African American experience. More particularly, they haveapplied these ideas to understanding and combating racism. Butit is important to remember that, to other African American intel-lectuals, critical theory is just one more hegemonic Eurocentric dis-course representing a White, Anglicized view of the world.


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The African American theorists considered in the followingparagraphs are explicit in acknowledging their study of the criticaltradition. In Outlaw’s and West’s work in particular, references toMarx, Horkheimer, Habermas, Gramsci, Foucault, and Marcuse areinterwoven into their discussions of Garvey, Du Bois, Locke, Cruse,and Fanon. One of the most well-known connections betweenAfrican American intellectuals and critical theory is that betweenAngela Davis and Marcuse. In a 1998 interview, Davis declared that“I think of both Baldwin and Marcuse as mentors who helped meto conceptualize a relationship between theory and practice, a chal-lenge that I continue to struggle with today” (Davis, 1998b, p. 20).Davis was Marcuse’s student at Brandeis University, and after beingintroduced to German idealism, she decided to study in Frankfurt,there attending lectures by Adorno and Habermas. She returnedto the United States to work closely with Marcuse “because he main-tained a sense of the connectedness between emerging social move-ments and his larger philosophical project” (Davis, 1998b, p. 23).Lucius T. Outlaw also describes how as a student he was “impressedand inspired” by the “provocative, interesting and insightful” (Out-law, 1998, p. 321) work of Marcuse which led him to a deeper en-gagement with critical theory, especially Habermas (Outlaw, 1996,pp. 159–182).

Both Davis and Outlaw are drawn to Marcuse’s engagementwith contemporary social and political movements, to his idea thatphilosophizing is endemic to social activism. As expressed by Davis,“Critical theory . . . has as its goal the transformation of society, notjust the transformation of ideas, but social transformation and thusthe reduction and elimination of human misery. It was on the basisof this insistence on the social implementation of critical ideas thatI was able to envisage a relationship between philosophy and Blackliberation” (Davis, 1988b, p. 22). In their use of critical theory toilluminate racism, Davis, West, and Outlaw emphasize how racistideology is buttressed by other forms of oppression based on eco-nomics, gender, sexual preference, physical capability, and so on.Consequently, they frame the fight against racism as necessarily en-tailing a fight against these interlocking systems of oppression.

Although these critically inclined African American scholarshighlight race as a central category of analysis, and though they all identify racist beliefs and practices as lying at the heart of


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dominant ideology, they also all acknowledge that in fightingracism they are fighting for a broader social transformation. Tothem dismantling racism does everyone a favor, it benefits all racialand ethnic groups. As Outlaw (1983a) puts it, “Our struggle for lib-eration as a people is but a part, a moment, of a wider struggle thatembraces other peoples, groups, and classes within the social order”(pp. 83–84).

Combating Racist AlienationOne of the most explicit attempts to explore how concepts drawnfrom critical theory can be combined with Black nationalism toinform an understanding of American racism is Maulana Karenga’sarticulation of Kawaida, a “synthesis of the best of nationalist, Pan-Africanist, and socialist thought” (Karenga, 1983, p. 212). In West’sview, the sophistication of Karenga’s analyses means they “standshoulders above much of the theoretical reflections on African-American’s oppression proposed by the Black Marxist left” (West,1993c, p. 263). Outlaw (1996) places Karenga’s work alongside thatof Asante (1998a, 1998b) in the school of Africology since it pro-poses as “the core of a ‘Black value system,’ the Nguzo Saba, providedto guide cultural and social change, and the organization of blacklife” (Outlaw, 1996, p. 119). In his articulation of Kawaida in Phi-losophy Born of Struggle (Harris, 1983), however, Karenga empha-sizes that his position also draws on a Marxist-influenced conceptof alienation.

It is important to note that not all African American scholarsagree that alienation is a central construct for understandingAfrican American experience. McGary (1997), for example, arguesthat the ability of African Americans “to form their own support-ive communities in the midst of a hostile environment” allowedthem “to maintain healthy self-concepts through acts of resistanceand communal nourishment” (p. 292). For him a continuing (andin his view mistaken) emphasis by liberals and Marxists on AfricanAmericans’ alienation only serves to deepen the perception thatAfrican Americans are rootless victims without deeply forged cul-tural traditions and community supports.

Alienation as a central unit of analysis for Karenga is groundedin his investigation of the ways in which European dominance of


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Africa represented a systematic dispossession of African culture fromthe continent’s indigenous people. Colonial rule ensured its own per-petuation by destroying African family forms, oral traditions, customs,and belief systems, thereby inducing a form of cultural amnesia. With“no historical memory to draw from and no future to look for out-side a servile association with white history and future” (Karenga,1983, p. 215), African people were alienated from the cultural tradi-tions and practices that defined them. Now, with little awareness oftheir African cultural heritage, and under the harsh realities of con-temporary American capitalism, members of the African Diasporaare reduced to “a permanent underclass set off from the rest of theAmerican working class by systematic racist discrimination” (p. 217).This is because “the ruling class and the ruling race overlap to form aruling race-class that imposes both racist and capitalist views on soci-ety” (p. 220). As a result African Americans “are not simply alienatedfrom their labor as workers, but also as Blacks . . . racial alienationjoins class alienation as a fundamental problem of Black self-con-sciousness” (p. 217).

Karenga defines alienation in familiar Marxist-inclined termsas the “estrangement and separation of humans from all or any-thing through which they can realize themselves” (1983, p. 216).For African Americans the dominant ideology of White supremacyis a crucial source of alienation in that it blocks efforts at self-recognition. In common with West and Outlaw, Karenga analysesrace as an ideological construct that prevents the development ofoppositional consciousness. Racial stereotypes and racist under-standings are viewed as part of the regime of truth, an example ofthe way knowledge construction is intertwined with power.

In this regime, power and knowledge combine to allow a smallgroup of White Europeans to assign worth and status to otherhuman beings on the basis of phenotype (people’s facial features,hair, and skin pigmentation). The more that non-Whites try toemulate European behaviors, appearance, and practices, the closerthey move to become the targets of patronizing tolerance. Overtexploitation, violence, and brutality are replaced by condescensionand cultural genocide. As part of dominant ideology, therefore,racism comprises “an elaborate system of pseudo-intellectual cate-gories, assumptions, and contentions negative to Third World peoples” that is designed “to create a non-historical dehumanized


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being who could not merit freedom and equality even by his ownjustification and dared not attempt rebellion” (p. 218).

Ideological dominance sooner or later begets ideological resis-tance in Karenga’s view, and he has a clear program of interven-tion to combat racist ideology. Breaking epistemologicaloppression means breaking “the monopoly the ruling ideology hason Afro-American minds” and beginning “to lay the basis for a crit-ical Afro-centric alternative” (1983, p. 220). Such an alternativewould be generated from and act on behalf of a Black nationalistculture that represented African traditions and African episte-mology. Karenga contends, “it is the ruling ideology that preventsAfro-Americans from perceiving their objective situation and realinterests” (p. 223) meaning that socioeconomic liberation is premisedon epistemological liberation. He urges the building of a Blacknationalist culture as a form of “self-conscious, collective thought andpractice through which a people creates itself, celebrates itself, and intro-duces itself to history and humanity” (p. 224). Citing Gramsci in his support, Karenga sees the need for a Black intellectual vanguard tolead this cultural, and ultimately political, struggle. This vanguardwould work as African American organic intellectuals to build and pro-claim “an Afro-centric theory, i.e. one that rises from, is focused onand behalf of them” (p. 223). As well as drawing on analytical con-structs from Marxism, Karenga thus also embraces an Afrocentric per-spective drawing on indigenous African cultural traditions in themanner of Asante (1998a, 1998b).

Turning to the African American LifeworldA call that echoes Karenga’s emphasis on the development of the-ory focused on behalf of African Americans is Outlaw’s insistenceon the need for a hermeneutics of the African American lifeworld.Outlaw is consistently explicit about the influence of critical the-ory (especially Marcuse, Horkheimer, and Habermas) on his work.He also acknowledges how Foucault’s elaboration of disciplinarypower “supports some of the criticisms of ‘Eurocentric’ intellec-tual endeavors advanced in African-American studies” (Outlaw,1996, p. 101). Mostly, though, Outlaw is concerned with Habermas’project to defend the lifeworld from attacks by capital and statepower by refocusing this through the lens of African American


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interests. He positions himself as a philosopher of African descentwho shares critical theory’s conception of philosophy as a tool for social change.

In Outlaw’s view, “the vocation of philosophizing . . . is to sharein the refinement and perpetuation of critical intelligence as apractice of life” (1996, p. 29), with this practice leading to “lifeexpressed as qualitatively-progressively-different” (p. 29). To livephilosophically is to “live life conditioned primarily by the activityof critical, dialectical thinking” (p. 30). More particularly, to liveas a Black philosopher is to be “guided by the interest (i.e. thevalue commitment) to serve the emancipatory efforts of people ofAfrican descent” (1983a, p. 66). This project necessarily entails thewidespread “revolutionary transformation of the American order”(p. 66).

Doing philosophy within the particularities of the African Amer-ican experience helps reveal the true needs, interests, values, andcontributions of African Americans. Outlaw argues that philoso-phizing in the interests of people of African descent develops a dis-tinctive Black philosophical identity based an awareness of Blackintellectual traditions. A primary purpose of African Americanphilosophers is to “become transparent to ourselves as a class interms of our history, our responsibilities, our possibilities” (1996,p. 27). Black intellectuals “need to be clear as to our grounding asblack thinkers (in) the long history of struggle on the part of ourpeople for an increasingly liberated existence” (p. 27). One chanceto develop a philosophy that will serve African Americans’ interestsis to combine Black Nationalism and critical theory. Outlaw believesthat both traditions are necessary to clarifying African Americans’real needs and the means by which these might be met.

Why is critical theory an important partner to Black National-ism? Outlaw argues that critical theory “seeks to cut through theveil of socially unnecessary domination by socially unnecessary sys-tems of authority and control via the praxis of critical reflection”(1983a, p. 72). As such, it provides a framework “within which wepeople of African descent (and others) can assess our situation andachieve clarity regarding which concrete historical possibilities arein our best interest” (p. 83). Reframed in the interests of AfricanAmericans, critical theory “has as its primary interest the liberationof black folk, and others, from domination, to the greatest extent


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possible” (p. 72). If critical theory is to be a useful partner in a fu-sion with Black Nationalism, however, it must incorporate an analy-sis of racism, and how this might be challenged, into its workings.

How might a racialized interpretation of critical theory servethe interests of people of African descent? Here Outlaw draws ex-plicitly on Habermas’ concept of the lifeworld to argue that criti-cal theory’s most useful contribution is to elaborate the contoursand constitutive elements of the African American lifeworld. Hecommits himself as a philosopher to understanding and communi-cating “the life-world of African-American people, in all of its ambi-guities, complexities, contradictions, and clarities; to our concretelife-praxis, in search of our distinct orientation” (1983a, p. 66).Where Habermas is concerned chiefly with the colonization of thelifeworld by the exchange dynamic of capitalism and the logisticsof bureaucratic rationality and state power, Outlaw focuses on itsinvasion by the dynamics of racist ideology. When the AfricanAmerican lifeworld is distorted by White supremacist ideology,then its members are hampered in their understanding of theircurrent situation and future possibilities. An emancipatory philo-sophical project, therefore, is to illuminate the African Americanlifeworld in a way that reveals racial identity as a positive constitu-tive element of the lifeworld, rather than as a source of shame orinternalized self-loathing. A racialized turn to the lifeworld wouldexplore “the lived experiences of persons within racial/ethnicgroups for whom raciality and ethnicity is a fundamental and pos-itive element of their identity” (Outlaw, 1983b, p. 177). Differencebased on racial heritage would be celebrated as a crucial part ofthe African American lifeworld, not viewed as something to beerased in the name of racial integration.

What elements comprise this lifeworld? Outlaw looks to the dif-ferent forms of expression produced in efforts to communicate thehistory of African American struggle. These include African folktales, religious rituals, political practices, music, poetry, art, and thelanguage of common currency. As concrete expressions of the Afri-can American lifeworld these elements, in Outlaw’s view, containfundamental meanings and orientations that can guide a programof political reconstruction serving African American interests. Re-claiming these meanings and orientations from a lifeworld dis-torted by White supremacy “will provide understandings of the


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historically conditioned concerns of black people (and) providethe clarified historical grounds for the orientation of present andfuture philosophical and practical activities in the interest of African-American people” (Outlaw, 1983a, p. 66). As the contours ofAfrican Americans’ response to racism are drawn, this will lead to“increased self-transparency—a broadening and intensification ofour personal and collective self-understanding” (p. 69). For Out-law this is “a condition necessary for restructuring present andfuture projects.” A hermeneutics of the African American lifeworldwill also help in “the restoration and repair of broken communi-cation among the various groupings of our people” (Outlaw, 1996,p. 30).

This mapping of the contours of the African American lifeworldrepresents a project for critical reflection very different from mostadult educational work in this area. Instead of reflection being usedto uncover the individual adult’s assumptions informing her expe-rience, reflection here has as its focus the reclamation of a lifeworldfrom the distortions of racist ideology. Learning to be critically reflec-tive in this instance contributes to the building of identity and polit-ical purpose amongst members of African American communitiesand becomes an important element in learning antiracist perspec-tives and practices. Learning to understand and appreciate the cul-tural and epistemological topography of the African Americanlifeworld is an adult education project that is explicitly geared to thefurtherance of African American interests. Although any curriculumproduced by this project might seem to be sectional, it will, in Out-law’s opinion, ultimately serve the broader social good of all groupsand communities since “many of the more fundamental needs ofblack people are shared by many others” (Outlaw, 1996, p. 29).

Restoring Critically Tempered HopeLearning to understand and dismantle racist power structures aspart of a broader movement of social transformation is a projectthat is also endorsed by Cornel West, perhaps the most prominentof contemporary critical African American intellectuals. Like Out-law, West draws strongly on critical theory to understand and advance African Americans’ interests, though unlike Outlaw heturns away from Habermas. In West’s opinion Habermas has only a


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“tenuous relation to Marxism” with his work serving to provide “aninnocuous badge of radicalism . . . a kind of opium for some of theAmerican left-academic intelligentsia” (West, 1993, p. 88). The fig-ures in the critical tradition most consistently acknowledged byWest are Marx, Foucault, and Gramsci, all of whom in his view havemuch to contribute to keeping revolutionary hope alive in the Afri-can American community. As bell hooks comments in the “talkingbook” she produced with West, “Cornel West is unique among Blackintellectuals in that he has always courageously identified himselfwith Marxist social analysis, and socialist political movement in theUnited States” (hooks and West, 1991, p. 22).

West defines himself as “an American Democratic Socialist ofAfrican descent” (1991, p. xi) in his introduction to The EthicalDimensions of Marxist Thought, thereby signaling his intent to usecritical theory in the interests of African Americans. In ProphesyDeliverance (1982), he proclaims his “abiding allegiance to pro-gressive Marxist social analysis and political praxis” (p. 12), an alle-giance that informs his understanding of the struggle for Blackfreedom as “a struggle that is a species of a radical democratic proj-ect that empowers and enhances the wretched of the earth” (West,1993a, p. x). West’s own role in this struggle is “first and foremostan intellectual freedom fighter” (p. 87) who works as a criticalorganic catalyst; “a person who stays attuned to the best of what themainstream has to offer—its paradigms, viewpoints and methods—yet maintains a grounding in affirming and enabling sub-culturesof criticism” (West, 1993c, p. 27). This Gramscian-influencedmodel of intellectual activism links oppositional work within theacademy “with political activity in grass-roots organizations, pre-party formations, or progressive associations intent on bringingtogether potential agents of social change” (p. 103). At the core ofWest’s intellectual vocation is his “profound commitment to what Icall a prophetic vision and practice primarily based on a distinctlyblack tragic sense of life” (p. x). This vision and practice ispremised on “the love ethic of Christian faith—the most absurdand alluring mode of being in the world—that enables me to live alife of hope against hope” (p. xi).

In these self-designated identities—democratic socialist, in-tellectual freedom fighter, critical organic catalyst, radical Chris-tian—we can see West’s celebrated refusal to remain bounded by


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traditional categorizations. As commentaries on West have noted(Yancy, 2001; Wood, 2000), his eclecticism has led to criticisms of su-perficiality and dilettantism, of touching on a concept here, allud-ing to an intellectual position there, with no deep articulation ofthese traditions. My belief is that West’s eclecticism is a principledeclecticism and a strength of his work as a connected, engaged or-ganic intellectual. It is principled because it stands in support of hisoverarching project to keep activist hope alive. West ranges far andwide in his studies because he wishes to indicate the support forsocial transformation implicit in so many different intellectual tra-ditions. He draws enthusiastically on any insights, from any source,that suggest ways of making democracy a reality in the United States.This breadth is a strength in that it allows him to speak to a widearray of constituencies and enclaves and to show their points of con-nection and interest.

West’s traversing of multiple intellectual terrains means he en-gages with bodies of thought that are often regarded by their pro-ponents as diametrically opposed. For example, he steadfastlyretains “an affinity to a philosophical version of American pragma-tism” (1982, p. 12) that is distinctly at odds with critical theory’s mis-trust (discussed in Chapter One) of pragmatism as self-interested,vulgar opportunism. But West’s affinity to pragmatism and his beliefin individuality are part and parcel of his enduring faith in the pos-sibility of democracy. The encroachment of the state on individualfreedom is, for him, a major threat to democratic processes. Indi-viduals may be formed by culture and society, but they are notpurely the sum total of traditions and forces. West also counters theradical pessimism of books such as Dialectic of Enlightenment with hisoptimistic belief in possibility and love. Despite his preoccupationwith the tragic dimension of existence, his Christianity fuels hisenduring sense of hope, a theme common to other fusions of Marx-ism and Christianity (MacIntyre, 1968; Marsden, 1991). He refusesto fall foul of a numbing despair, though in no sense does he under-estimate the power of racist, antidemocratic forces, or dismiss theconstant presence of disease and death. West’s commitment to theabsurd yet alluring love ethic of Christianity allows him to “keepalive a tempered hope for the future” (West, 1993c, p. xi).


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A Racialized Engagement with the Critical TraditionAs already mentioned, West consistently exhibits a racialized en-gagement with three major figures in the critical tradition—Marx,Foucault, and Gramsci. The importance of considering seriouslybut critically the first of these figures is a theme that threadsthroughout his work. For West, Marx’s ideas are “indispensable—although ultimately inadequate—in grasping distinctive featuresof African-American oppression” (West, 1993c, p. 259). In his view,however, the “richness of the Marxist methodological orientationand analytical perspective in relation to race remains untapped”(p. 261). This is partly because Marx himself did not conduct ananalysis of race as a separate dimension of oppression nor did heanticipate how “a common denominator of white supremacistabuse cuts across class, gender, sexual orientation” (West, 1993b,p. 131). In the words of the title of West’s best seller, Marx failedto anticipate that Race Matters (1993d).

There are other silences and blind spots in Marx; “a relativeinability to understand the complexity of culture—issues of iden-tity and so forth” (1993b, p. 139) and a lack of understanding ofhow power is “tied to the microphysics of a society” (p. 139). Fur-thermore, Marxism is irrevocably linked in the American imagi-nation to totalitarianism and Stalinist oppression, which ensuresits continuing exclusion from mainstream consideration as ameans of understanding American life. In his talking book withbell hooks, West speaks of how “any critic of capitalism in theUnited States is marginalized, and therefore it’s very difficulty forthem to speak a language that is intelligible to large numbers ofpeople” (hooks and West, 1991, p. 44).

Yet, time and time again, West urges the importance of engag-ing with Marx as “an inescapable part of the intellectual weaponryfor present-day freedom fighters” (1991, p. xiv). While he acknowl-edges that contemporary matrices of oppression—nationalism,racism, homophobia, patriarchy, ecological abuse—are not ac-counted for by Marx, he remains convinced that “these complexphenomena cannot be grasped, or changed, without the insightsof Marxist theory” (hooks and West, 1991, p. 44). Why should thisbe so? For West it is the rise of global capitalism and the ever-increasing power of multinationals that make Marx indispensable.


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In an interview with George Yancy (1998), West states his case asfollows: “I don’t see how, in fact, we can understand the marketforces around the world and the fundamental role of transnationalcorporations, the subordination of working people, the tremen-dous class conflicts going on around the world at the market placebetween management and labor without understanding some ofthe insights of the Marxist tradition” (p. 41).

In Prophesy Deliverance (1982), West proposes a blending ofMarxism with Black theology, to him the single most importantsource of philosophical energy for African American activism.Black theology and Marxism both employ a methodology of un-masking falsehood, but in his opinion “Black theologians barelymention the wealth, power and influence of multinational corpo-rations” (West, 1982, p. 113). Neither do they make the linkbetween “the way in which the racist interpretations of the gospelthey reject encourage and support the capitalist system of pro-duction, its grossly unequal distribution of wealth, and its closelyconnected political arrangements” (p. 113). Inserting a Marxistelement into Black theology would ensure that Black oppressionin capitalist America was understood as linked to Black and Brownoppression in the third world.

As a way of illuminating the interconnected nature of racial andclass oppression, West also calls for a “Marxist influenced genealog-ical materialist analysis of racism” (1993c, p. 268). This would probethe logic of White supremacy through a “micro-institutional (orlocalized) analysis of the mechanisms that promote and contestthese logics in the everyday lives of people” (p. 268). Such an analy-sis would explore “the ways in which self-images and self-identitiesare shaped, and the impact of alien, degrading cultural styles, aes-thetic ideals, psychosexual sensibilities and linguistic gestures uponpeoples of color” (p. 268). Concurrent with this microinstitutionalanalysis would go a macrostructural exploration of “class exploita-tion, state repression and bureaucratic domination, including resis-tance against these modes, in the lives of people of color” (p. 268).

This emphasis on a genealogical analysis of racist practices ineveryday life demonstrates West’s acknowledgment of anothermajor figure in the critical tradition, Michel Foucault. West declaresthat “Foucault’s perspective can be valuable for Afro-Americanphilosophers whose allegiance is to a revolutionary future” (West,


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1983, p. 58) because it helps illuminate how the power of racist ide-ology is made manifest in daily conversations, gestures, rituals, andinteractions. By fusing Foucault’s ideas with a neo-Marxist analysis,“Foucault’s viewpoint can be creatively transformed and renderedfruitful for a genealogy of modern racism, in both its ideational andmaterial forms” (p. 58). This genealogy of racism would not justanalyze the way dominant discourse inaugurated the category ofrace and excluded positive notions of Black beauty, culture, andcharacter from its discursive field. It would also “put forward anAfro-American counter discourse, in all its complexity and diversity,to the modern European racist discourse” (p. 58). Such a discoursewould “exercise and evaluate how the Afro-American response pro-motes or precludes a revolutionary future” (p. 58). In The AmericanEvasion of Philosophy (1989), West does criticize Foucault for his sur-reptitious ascription of agency to discourses, disciplines, and tech-niques (1989, p. 225), but overall he acknowledges that theparticular philosophical stance of prophetic pragmatism “promotesgenealogical materialist modes of analysis similar in many respectsto those of Foucault” (p. 223).

Finally, West peppers his works with approving references toGramsci, describing himself as a Gramscian Marxist and callingGramsci “the most penetrating Marxist theorist of culture in thiscentury” (West, 1982, p. 118). Explaining his affinity to Gramsci hewrites “my particular stand within the Marxist tradition is linked pri-marily to that of Gramsci, which always places stress on historicalspecificity, on concrete circumstances and situations” (1998, p. 41).Just as he claims Foucault’s work reflects the spirit of propheticpragmatism, so he believes that “prophetic pragmatism is inspiredby the example of Antonio Gramsci [who] exemplifies the criticalspirit and oppositional sentiments of prophetic pragmatism” (West,1989, p. 230). West is drawn to Gramsci’s (and also RaymondWilliams’) idea that hegemony is always contested and open to be-ing undermined by specific actions taken in specific situations. Heis drawn also to Gramsci’s emphasis on cultural products—films,books, rap music CD’s—as sites of resistance and has himself pro-duced a rap CD, Sketches of My Culture (West, 2001). In particular,West refers repeatedly and explicitly to Gramsci’s idea of theorganic intellectual as a useful descriptor both for his own work andfor the work of critical Black intellectuals in general. He believes,


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as did Gramsci, that “the aim of philosophy is . . . to become partof a social movement by nourishing and being nourished by thephilosophical views of oppressed people themselves for the aims ofsocial change and personal meaning” (1989, p. 131).

This situating of philosophy in everyday practices and strugglesis a defining feature of the organic intellectual. In Keeping Faith(1993c), West reframes the concept slightly as that of the criticalorganic catalyst, “a person who stays attuned to the best of what themainstream has to offer—its paradigms, viewpoints and methods—yet maintains a grounding in affirming and enabling sub-culturesof criticism” (p. 27). In his view, Black intellectuals should func-tion as organic intellectuals. They should be scholar-activists whoare grounded in the experiences and struggles of the African Amer-ican community while being informed by the wisdom of allies out-side that racial group. This model of intellectual engagement“pushes academic intellectuals beyond contestation within the acad-emy . . . and links this contestation with political activity in grass-roots groups, pre-party formations, or progressive associationsintent on bringing together potential agents of social change”(p. 103). Such groups include activists of color, feminists, lesbiansand gays, black churches, ecological movements, rank and file laborcaucuses, and Black nationalists.

As organic intellectuals, African American philosophers havespecific responsibilities in West’s view. In a Foucaultian vein, theymust “articulate a new ‘regime of truth’ linked to, yet not confinedby, indigenous institutional practices permeated by the kinetic oral-ity and emotional physicality, the rhythmic syncopation, the pro-tean improvisation and the religious, rhetorical and antiphonalrepetition of African-American life” (1993c, p. 82). They must alsoconduct “a critical self-inventory” (p. 85) and work to create andreactivate “institutional networks that promote high-quality criti-cal habits primarily for the purpose of black insurgency” (p. 83).West is clear on the need for organizing and is critical of overlycharismatic activists who leave no organizational or communitystructures in the communities they visit. In approving contrast tothis, he cites Martin Luther King as “an organic intellectual of thefirst order—a highly educated and informed thinker with organiclinks to ordinary folk” (p. 273). King’s roots in the black church“gave him direct access to the life-worlds of the majority of black


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southerners” (p. 273). His education provided him with an analy-sis of anticolonialism as well as bringing him respect within theBlack community, and he “facilitated relations with progressive nonblack people, thereby insuring openness to potential allies” (p. 273).

As the foregoing discussion clearly shows, West’s work drawsstrongly on critical theory—in particular the work of Marx, Fou-cault, and Gramsci—as one of the central intellectual traditionscontributing to African American philosophy. His project is sum-marized by the titles of two of his books Restoring Hope (West andSealey, 1997) and Keeping Faith (West, 1993c). To him “the princi-pal task of the Afro-American philosopher is to keep alive the hopeof a revolutionary future . . . in which the multifaceted oppressionof Afro-Americans is, if not eliminated, alleviated” (West, 1983,p. 57). In pursuing this task, West believes that African Americanphilosophers must preserve critical theory’s notions of negationand transformation and initiate “a serious confrontation with theMarxist tradition and, among others, the recent work of MichelFoucault” (p. 57). But African American philosophy must also be“indigenously grounded in the prophetic religious and progressivesecular practices of Afro-Americans” (p. 57) and have as its partic-ular project the generation of guidelines for social action thatsprings from the true needs of African Americans. He summarizes“the major function of Afro-American critical thought” as being“to reshape the contours of Afro-American history and provide anew self-understanding of the Afro-American experience whichsuggest guidelines for action in the present” (West, 1982, p. 22).

There are several elements to this project. One is, as we haveseen, to conduct a genealogy of racist ideas and practices. Anotheris “to provide a theoretical reconstruction and evaluation of Afro-American responses to white supremacy” (1982, p. 23). A third is toexplore the cultural roots and sensibilities of African Americans. Afourth is “to present a dialogical encounter between Afro-Americancritical thought and progressive Marxist social analysis” (p. 23). Thisencounter is much more than an interesting philosophical conflu-ence for West. Indeed, he sees such an intellectual fusion as crucialto democratic social reconstruction declaring confidently that “inan alliance between prophetic Christianity and progressive Marxism. . . lies the hope of Western civilization” (p. 23).


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Finally, West sees the task of African American critical thoughtbeing to disentangle and interpret the African, European, andAmerican elements in Black experience. As West writes, “The life-worlds of Africans in the United States are conceptually and exis-tentially neither solely African, European, nor American, but morethe latter than any of the former” (p. 24). As mentioned earlier inthis chapter, the intertwined intersections of African, Native Ameri-can, and European cultures is one important reason why the Afri-centric adult education scholar, Scipio Colin III, has generated theterm “African Ameripean” as an alternative to “African American.”

Infusing Pragmatism into CriticalityTo critical theorists and Africentrists alike, the most challenging(and, to many, perplexing) aspect of West’s thought is his constantattempt to integrate the philosophical spirit of pragmatism into hisproject for African American reconstruction. After all, pragmatistsdo not usually describe themselves as organic intellectuals or free-dom fighters. But West is very consistent in declaring his “affinityto a philosophical version of American pragmatism” (1982, p. 12)alongside his recognition of Marxism. Despite pragmatism’s avoid-ance of racial analysis, and the conduct of its discourse in thewhite-walled labyrinth mentioned earlier, its contributions toAfrican American thought are “enormous” in West’s view (1982,p. 21). He writes of pragmatism that “through its historicist orien-tation, for example, Afro-American thought can avoid both abso-lutist dogmatism and paralysis in action” (p. 21). For West“pragmatism provides an American context for Afro-Americanthought, a context that imparts to it both a shape and a heritageof philosophical legitimacy” (p. 21). In a conversation with bellhooks, he says that “to talk about America is to talk about improvi-sation and experimentation” (hooks and West, 1991, p. 34),themes at the core of pragmatism.

Why should African American intellectuals take seriously a philo-sophical tradition viewed as a compromised element of Whitesupremacy by some in the African American intellectual commu-nity—as “bourgeois through and through” in McClendon’s (1983,p. 38) words? West makes his case by citing two distinctive contribu-tions pragmatism can make to building an African American praxis.


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First, he reads Emerson, Peirce, James, and Dewey as spokespersonsfor a morally grounded philosophical tradition tied to the creationof a true democracy. In his major book on the subject, he speaks ofpragmatism’s “unashamedly moral emphasis” (1989, p. 4) and its“yearning for principled resistance and struggle that can change ourdesperate plight” (p. 4). He locates its impulse in “a plebian radi-calism that fuels an anti-patrician rebelliousness for the moral aimof enriching individuals and expanding democracy” (p. 5). Prag-matism “tries to deploy thought as a weapon to enable more effec-tive action” (p. 5), particularly action taken to promote “theflowering and flourishing of individuality under conditions ofdemocracy” (1993a, p. 32). Pragmatism does not support action foraction’s sake. Although it puts “a premium on human will, humanpower and human action” (p. 37), it is neither vulgar practicality norunprincipled opportunism. In an unconscious echo of another prag-matically inclined intellectual activist (the adult educator EduardLindeman) West sees pragmatism as “preoccupied with . . . thedemocratic way of life” (West, 1993a, p. 31)—coincidentally the titleof one of Lindeman’s last books (Smith and Lindeman, 1951). Ademocratic society is one comprised of “unique selves acting in andthrough participatory communities (in) an open, risk-ridden future”(West, 1993a, p. 43).

Its self-critical strain is a second argument West adduces in sup-port of his advocacy of pragmatism. He particularly admires Dewey’sbelief that philosophizing requires the constant critical analysis ofassumptions. Although West works outside the adult education dis-course community, his emphasis on the importance of critical analy-sis is framed in terms very familiar to adult education scholarspreoccupied with critical reflection and transformative learning.Thus, a pragmatic orientation “constantly questions the tacitassumptions of earlier interpretations of the past. It scrutinizes thenorms these interpretations endorse, the solutions they offer, andthe self-images they foster” (West, 1982, p. 20). To pragmatists (asto critically reflective adult educators), “norms, premises and pro-cedures . . . are never immune to revision” (p. 20). Pragmatism isdefined by its “calling into question any form of dogmatism” andits belief in a form of fallibilism in which “every claim is open to revi-sion” (West, 1993a, p. 43). It is not to be confused with an antithe-oretical stance, or with the idea that anything goes depending on


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the context. Instead, “it subtly incorporates an experimental tem-per within theory-laden descriptions of problematic situations (forinstance, social and cultural crises)” (West, 1993c, p. 137).

This antifoundational strain of pragmatism, in which experi-mentation and problem solving run strong, is fused with West’s re-ligious beliefs and his commitment to critical theory to produce anew variant of pragmatism—prophetic pragmatism. Propheticpragmatism is West’s unique blend of Judeo-Christian traditions,European critical theory, American pragmatism, and Black theol-ogy, a blend that to him best fits the fight against the nihilism andcynicism he sees as destroying both the African American com-munity and the broader society. In its religious affiliations,prophetic pragmatism draws on “traditions of Judaism and Chris-tianity that promote courageous resistance against, and relentlesscritiques of, injustice and social misery” (1993c, p. 139). In Biblicalfashion these traditions “help keep alive collective memories ofmoral (that is anti-idolatrous) struggle and non-market values”(p. 139). From critical theory, prophetic pragmatism incorporatesthat tradition’s microstructural and macrostructural analyses of thedynamics of oppression embedded in the works of Marx, Gramsci,and Foucault. Prophetic thought and Marxism “both focus on theplight of the exploited, oppressed, and degraded peoples of theworld, their relative powerlessness and possible empowerment”(West, 1982, p. 107).

From American pragmatism, its prophetic variant draws thespirit of self-criticism and the pursuit of the democratic way of life.Hence, “critical temper as a way of struggle and democratic faithas a way of life are the twin pillars of prophetic pragmatism” (West,1993c, p. 140). Here the antifoundational willingness of Dewey toexperiment with multiple approaches to realizing democracy isharnessed to the project of combating racist ideology and prac-tices. Finally, from Black theology, prophetic pragmatism draws thedesire “to bestow dignity, grandeur and tragedy upon the deni-grated lives of ordinary black people and to promote improvisa-tional life-strategies of love and joy in black life-worlds of radicaland brutish contingency” (p. xii). Like critical theory, Black the-ology begins with negation, in this case “negating white interpre-tations of the gospel” (West, 1982, p. 108). Deconstructing theseinterpretations is the necessary precursor to “transforming past


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understandings of the gospel into new ones” (p. 109). Black the-ology also shares with critical theory a desire “to link some notionof liberation to the future conditions of the downtrodden”(p. 108). However, because of the lack of class analysis in Black the-ology West views it as insufficient to be a stand-alone tool for thefurtherance of African American interests.

The element of fallibilistic self-criticality endemic to propheticpragmatism has a particular resonance for the practice of adult ed-ucation. In its skepticism regarding theoretical dogma and reified,standardized models of practice, prophetic pragmatism providesa justification for a critically reflective practice of adult educationemphasizing openness, flexibility, and contingency. In West’s wordsthe “critical temper” of prophetic pragmatism “promotes a full-fledged experimental disposition that highlights the provisional,tentative and revisable character of our visions, analyses andactions” (West, 1993c, p. 140).

In adult educational terms, possessing a critical temper meansavoiding a slavish adherence to a particular methodology, whetherthis be andragogical, self-directed, transformative, or didactic. Itmeans that continuously researching the different contexts inwhich adults are learning, whether these be adult basic educationprograms, community action groups, organizational teams, orhigher education classrooms, becomes an imperative of good prac-tice. A critically reflective stance toward adult education practice,like a prophetically pragmatic one, abandons any premature com-mitment to one approach, no matter how liberatory this mightappear. Instead there is a principled methodological eclecticism,a readiness to experiment with any and all approaches in the pur-suit of emancipatory learning. This is particularly the case withadult education initiatives that see themselves as antiracist (Hayesand Colin, 1994).

When applied to adult education, the methodological eclecti-cism of prophetic pragmatism can be called principled for two rea-sons. First, it eschews any pretence that adult education lacks asociopolitical dimension and acknowledges instead that practice isdriven by moral and political impulses. In West’s case his practiceis geared toward the furtherance of African American interests, thefight against racist ideology, and the democratic transformation ofsociety. A prophetically pragmatic approach (and, by implication,


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a critically reflective form of adult education) “begins with socialstructural analyses” and “makes explicit its moral and political aims”(West, 1993c, p. 23). Such an approach is unashamedly “partisan,partial, engaged and crisis-centered” (p. 23). Yet, combined with itsopenly acknowledged intent of changing minds, practices, andstructures, prophetic pragmatism “always keeps open a skeptical eyeto avoid dogmatic traps, premature closures, formulaic formula-tions or rigid conclusions” (p. 23). Its solicitation of critiques of itsaims and procedures is a defining feature of its internal logic.

Second, a prophetically pragmatic approach is principled be-cause it shares with a critically reflective orientation a commitmentto the collective creation of knowledge. Prophetic pragmatism con-ceives of knowledge as developed “within the conceptual frame-work of intersubjective communal inquiry” (West, 1982, p. 21) inwhich “knowledge claims are secured by the social practices of acommunity of inquirers” (p. 21). As such, prophetic pragmatismexhibits a direct connection to one of the strongest traditions inthe adult educational field. This is the tradition of community-based, dialogically inclined, groups of activists and citizens work-ing collaboratively to examine their experiences and practices witha view to transforming society in democratic directions. This is thetradition of Lindeman, Horton, and Freire and, in Gyant’s (2002)view, also that of Alain Locke, the first African American presidentof the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education.It ascribes an explicit social purpose to adult education and framesadult educational practice as an analog of the very participatorydemocracy it is intending to bring about. It privileges collaborativedialog over individual analysis and fights any tendency to the pri-vatization of knowledge.

It is interesting that the White and Latin American adult educa-tors emblematic of this tradition—Lindeman, Horton, and Freire—toward the end of their lives exemplified the spirit of critical temperthat West associates with his own formulation of prophetic pragma-tism. Although a theme in much of these three adult educators’ ear-lier work is the importance of nondidactic modes of practice, aftera lifetime’s practice all three advocated a principled methodologi-cal eclecticism. Lindeman declared that he was open to using anymethodology in adult education for social change depending on thecircumstances and learners’ past experiences (Brookfield, 1987b).


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Horton admitted that at times he would give presentations as a wayof building trust and meeting activists half way before moving towork dialogically, and that the timing and modalities of how he con-tributed to dialog depended very much on his understanding of acontext (Horton, 1990; Horton and Freire, 1990). Freire reversedhis condemnation of lectures as the epitome of banking education,emphasized the importance of rigorous, line-by-line critical reading(with a dictionary if necessary) of texts, and allowed that lecturescould be critically stimulating while apparently dialogic groups couldbe exercises in insidious manipulation (Shor and Freire, 1987;Freire and Macedo, 1995). All three also committed themselves toantiracist practices, with Lindeman being one of the few Whiteadult educators to publish in the Journal of Negro Education, and theHighlander Folk School becoming an adult educational center forCivil Rights’ activists.

The Africentric Paradigm as an Alternative DiscourseThe work of Karenga, Outlaw, and West is paralleled in recentyears by the emergence within adult education scholarship of aracialized analysis of African American learners’ alienation frommainstream adult education practices and African American schol-ars’ alienation from the field’s dominant discourses and scholar-ship (Smith and Colin, 2001). Concepts central to the field suchas andragogy, self-directed learning, critical reflection, and trans-formative learning have been generated by White male scholarsbased on studies of mostly White, middle-class adult learners.Explicit or implicit claims that such ideas comprise the corner-stones of a distinctive universal theory of adult learning and edu-cation are not just empirically suspect but also highly exclusionary,in themselves a form of racism. If philosophical inquiry representsa white-walled labyrinth (in the terms quoted by Harris at thebeginning of this chapter), so does adult education scholarship.The ways that American members of the African Diaspora experi-ence participation in adult education, and in particular how thisrepresents an alienation from African traditions, sensibilities, andpractices, have traditionally been ignored.

In the last two decades or so, however, several theoretical linesof inquiry have emerged that explore an African American, racial-


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ized interpretation of adult educational practices and adult learn-ing concepts. We have Colin’s (1988, 2002) theory of the importanceof selfethnic reflectors in adult education (drawing on the work ofMarcus Garvey), the documentation of African American learners’and academics’ entries into, and negotiations of, higher education(Johnson-Bailey, 2001; James and Farmer, 1993), and the celebra-tion of African American women leaders and activists (Easter, 2002;Peterson, 2002; Brown, 2001). There have been efforts to developAfricentric models of curriculum for graduate adult education(Colin and Guy, 1998; Colin, 1994) and the exploration of Africaninfluenced adult learning and educational practices (Smith, 2001).The intellectual history of the field has been reframed as influencedsignificantly by the debates regarding the fight against racism con-ducted by Du Bois and Washington (Potts, 2002), Marcus Garvey(Colin, 2002), Alain Locke (Guy, 1994; Gyant, 2002), and Malcolm X(Smallwood, 2002) amongst others. Peterson (1999) has also out-lined the contribution of critical race theory to the continuing dialogamongst African American adult educators regarding antiracist practice.

This body of scholarship represents a contestation of the domi-nant White conceptualization of adult education history and prac-tice. Furthermore, the creation of the AERC African Americanpreconference (which some believe overshadows the official main-stream conference in terms of its intellectual vigor) represents apotent oppositional discourse community within which the devel-opment of Afrocentric and Africentric theories of adult educationare emerging. In Karenga’s terms, the initiatives described abovecertainly meet his criterion that an Afrocentric theory must risefrom the experiences of African Americans (in this case their prac-tices as adult learners and adult educators) and be focused on andbehalf of them. It also serves the larger social good of the field tohave such an emphasis at the forefront of adult educators’ con-cerns, irrespective of these educators’ racial background.

However, as Smith and Colin (2001) document, the struggle byAfrican American adult education scholars to bring African Amer-ican perspectives into the field’s discourse and thereby “make theinvisible visible” (Smith and Colin, 2001, p. 65) is one of continuedmarginalization. Africentric adult education scholars tell of Whitefaculty’s and graduate students’ perceptions of them as ignorant of


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Eurocentric perspectives, only interested in pushing one racializedparadigm, and intellectually limited. Respondents in their study ofAfrican American professors of adult education talk of the “hell”that is their life as an academic, of having strangers automaticallyturn to them in a university office expecting them to be a secretary,and of being heard but not listened to. In their terms, “the disac-knowledgment or debasement of an Africentric Paradigm serves asa form of ‘public invalidation’ which is rooted in an ideology ofracial superiority and inferiority by both students and colleagues”(Smith and Colin, 2001, p. 64).

What comprises an Africentric approach to adult education the-orizing and practice? Guy and Colin (1998) write that Africentristadult education texts “approach their subject from the cultural ref-erence point of the African-American experience . . . are written bypersons who have direct cultural knowledge as African Americans,and . . . represent classic or seminal statements or analyses of adulteducation from an African American perspective” (p. 86). As aphilosophical orientation, Africentrism is “reflective of the socio-historical context in which African Ameripean/African Americanindividuals lived. The salient feature of this context, regardless oftime period, was racism” (Colin and Guy, 1998, p. 44). Hence, anAfricentric approach to adult education “addresses socioculturaland educational goals in light of the African Ameripeans’/AfricanAmericans’ striving against racism” (p. 44). The Africentric focusof practice is consistent with adult education’s traditional learnercenteredness in that Africentric adult education builds on the coreexperience of its adult learners (that of experiencing racism) andexplores how learners can be empowered through action (by dis-mantling racism).

To Colin and Guy, the Swahili concept of Nguzo Saba is at thecore of the Africentric paradigm. Its values—Umoja (unity), Kujich-agulia (self-determination), Ujima (collective work and responsibil-ity), Ujamaa (cooperative economics), Nia (purpose), Kuumba(creativity), and Imani (faith)—stress community, interdependence,and collective action. In Colin and Guy’s view, “this differs signifi-cantly from traditional Eurocentric perspectives of individualism,competition, and hierarchical forms of authority and decision-making” (1998, p. 50). The seven principles of Nguzo Saba match aparticular curricular orientation to adult education, one that focuses


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on selfethnic liberation and empowerment. Drawing on Marcus Gar-vey’s philosophy of selfethnic reliance, Colin and Guy argue thatAfrican American adult education programs must be “designed tocounteract the sociocultural and the socio-psychological effects ofracism” (Colin and Guy, 1998, p. 47). They should be developed bymembers of the ethnic or racial group that have lived the experi-ence of racism in the “firm belief that members of the race are quitecapable of assuming leadership roles in their own liberation: psy-chologically, educationally, and socially” (p. 47).

Crucially, Africentric adult education practices and under-standings must be generated outside the dominant Eurocentric ide-ology. Instead of andragogy or criticality as intellectual lynchpins ofpractice, the principles of Nguzo Saba move center stage. In Colinand Guy’s opinion, “from an adult educational standpoint, thismeans that the selection, discussion and critique of African Ameri-pean/African American content must not occur based on using stan-dards or criteria arising from traditional Eurocentric perspectives.Rather, selection of content about African Ameripean/AfricanAmerican adult education is based on an Africentric perspective”(Colin and Guy, 1998, p. 51).

This perspective raises problems for those who seek to racializecritical theory in the interests of African Americans. As a Eurocen-tric discourse, the racial membership of its authors appears to pre-vent critical theory from having any connection to Africentric adulteducation. However, many within critical theory would dispute thatit represents a traditional Eurocentric perspective, arguing insteadthat it represents a perspective that has been subjugated and mar-ginalized within dominant Eurocentric discourses for being too con-tentious, too ideological, too subversive. Those in the tradition whowere forced to flee Nazi Germany and the Holocaust knew viscer-ally the experience of genocide. The themes of individualism, com-petition, hierarchical authority, and decision making attributed totraditional Eurocentric perspectives are, as the previous nine chap-ters demonstrate, the themes also challenged by the counterdis-course of critical theory.

Others would argue that the values of community, interdepen-dence, and collective action that lie at the heart of Nguzo Saba arealso the basis of European working-class political movements andcultures, and the normative basis of critical theory itself. In this


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regard adult educational practices derived from critical theoryshare some of the emphases of Africentric adult education—forexample, breaking the individualization and competition impliedin interpretations of self-directed learning and privileging the col-lective cocreation of knowledge within collaborative work groups.For critical theory, authority and identity are viewed as residing inthe collective, not the individual, and decision making becomes acommunity process. For an adult educational interpretation ofthese values, and the difficulties of realizing them within hierar-chical structures, see the discussion by Avila and others (2000) ofan attempt to recast graduate adult education as a process of par-ticipatory learning.

Of course what is missing from critical theory, and what is cru-cial to Africentrism, is a consistent and clear focus on race as thecentral construct. Critical theory’s focus on alienation, and its attri-bution of alienation to capitalism and bureaucratic rationality, donot lead it to an historical focus on understanding and combatingracism through selfethnic or other forms of liberation. Critical the-ory does not dismiss the racism embedded in dominant ideology,but neither does it highlight such racism as its overarching con-cern. An Africentric orientation on the other hand sees race, notclass, as the central problem of our time (to borrow Du Bois’ for-mulation). As such, Africentric adult education incorporates, inColin’s (2002) view, Marcus Garvey’s emphasis on race first, racepride and race unity.

However, an Africentric adult education does not seek to imi-tate European ethnocentrism (in which Whiteness is placed as theunacknowledged conceptual center) by regarding all things Africanas inherently superior. Colin points out that Africentrism is not eth-nocentrism and that “the Africentric approach does not view otherracial and cultural groups as being comparatively inferior” (Colin,2002, p. 57). What is important in Africentric adult education is to“present and preserve the intellectual and philosophical traditionsin African Ameripean/African American history and culture”(Colin and Guy, 1998, p. 49), not to denigrate other cultures andtraditions. In Colin’s view, the adult education practice of MarcusGarvey represented this Africentric emphasis in that it “reconcep-tualized the purpose and aims of adult education for those peoplewho bear the burden of institutional racism” (Colin, 2002, p. 61).


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In this chapter I have attempted (within the limits of my racialmembership) to explore racialized interpretations of critical the-ory that incorporate some of its analytical approaches and con-ceptual tools in the broader project of understanding andcombating racist ideology. In the next chapter I take this processone stage further by examining how scholarship on gender thatdraws on the critical tradition influences the conduct of criticaladult education.


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Chapter Eleven

Gendering Criticality

As will be all too clear from earlier chapters, the Frankfurt Schoolof first-generation critical theory was largely generated by men formen. Concepts central to its discourse such as the commodificationof labor, the alienating character of work, the oppositional role ofthe organic intellectual, and the re-creation of a public sphere wereall articulated against the backdrop of a mostly male-conceivedworld of work and politics located in factories and bureaucracies.Since capitalism is viewed as an all-enveloping oppressive system,most critically inclined theorists are ready to admit to the impor-tance of liberating all people—men, women, and children—fromits constraints. But, as with race, gender is undertheorized in themale-authored Frankfurt canon. First-generation critical theory isstrong on the analysis of alienated labor or the way repressive tol-erance effectively neuters alternate ideologies but weak on theanalysis of patriarchy as a source of female alienation or the waypatriarchy allows a degree of carefully managed feminist critique asa way of heading off a more sustained challenge to the system.

Feminist responses to critical theory’s exclusionary tendencieshave taken many forms. One major movement has been the articu-lation of distinctively feminist epistemologies. This perspectiveemphasizes gender-based modes of cognition such as connectedknowing (Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule, 1986) and ma-ternal thinking (Ruddick, 1995). There has been a vigorous debatein feminist literature regarding the validity of feminist epistemol-ogy and the extent to which this analysis promotes or impedeswomen’s interests (see, for example, Chodorow, 1989; Alcoff andPotter, 1993; Grant, 1993; Fluss, 1989). Writers such as Fraser(1989, 1997), and Gore (1993) have pointed out the dangers of a

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kind of essentialism that confines women to an ethic of care (Gilli-gan, 1982). In their view, this emphasis on traditional feminine qual-ities of nurturance, by implication, reserves the exercise of rationalityfor men.

By way of response, those identified as arguing for the recog-nition of gender-based modes of cognition sometimes argue thattheir position has been oversimplified as representing a wholly bio-logical determination of cognition. For example, in the follow-uptext to the influential Women’s Ways of Knowing (Belenky, Clinchy,Goldberger, and Tarule, 1986), Nancy Goldberger observes that“we did not claim that the five perspectives or ways of knowing thatwe described were essentially female” (Goldberger, 1996, p. 7).Goldberger insists that the volume’s authors wished only to demon-strate that “there are hidden agendas of power in the way societiesdefine and validate and ultimately genderize knowledge” (p. 7). Ina new preface to her 1989 book, Maternal Thinking, Sara Ruddickpointed out that “there is nothing foreordained about maternalresponse” (p. xi), that “mothering is construed as work rather thanas an identity or fixed biological or legal relationship” (p. xi), andthat “there have always been men who mother” (p. xii).

Mechtild Hart (1992) argues that mothering by either sex canbe viewed as an inherently critical project, particularly when viewedfrom the social margins rather than from the center of establishedWhite masculinist norms. To Hart a crucial element of motherworkis “raising the child against these norms, teaching her about theirpower, but also about their built-in injustice” (p. 185). Hart drawson critical theory to propose “an alternative concept of work,where the involvement in body and mind, in nature and culture,is seen as creating and nourishing life” (1995, p. 101). Like Rud-dick, Hart argues that motherwork—living and working withchildren—is something that everyone, regardless of gender, is con-nected to. Her vision is of a society in which such work “wouldbecome an issue for all workers . . . where the very term ‘worker’would include this reality” (p. 119).

In this chapter I begin by focusing attention on the particularfeminist response to critical theory represented by women educatorsand theorists who have taken some of the tradition’s concepts andreinterpreted these in women’s interest. Some of these feminists en-gage with particular male critical theorists such as Marx (Hartmann,

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1995; MacKinnon, 1989), Habermas (Meehan, 1995; Fleming, 1997;Gouthro, 2003), Foucault (Diamond and Quinby, 1988; Sawicki,1991), and Gramsci (Kenway, 2001). Others (Hirschmann and Di Ste-fano, 1996; Hernandez, 1997) focus more on gendering broad con-cepts of democracy, civil society, autonomy, community, obligation,and care. Whatever their focus, these writers are trying to take fromcritical theory those elements that best explain and further the posi-tion of women. Just as the theorists reviewed in the last chapter wereattempting to racialize critical theory to serve African Americans’interests, so the theorists reviewed in the current chapter are engagedin the project of gendering critical theory to serve women’s interests.This project involves both challenging the centrality of male world-views within critical theory, and attempting to build on the elementsof these that are most productive for advancing women’s interests.

However, as Luke (1992), Fraser (1995), and others have pointedout, talking in a generic way about women’s interests, as if the uni-versality of gender membership trumped all other differences of race,culture, education, ethnicity, and ideology, is to privilege gender ina way that is contested by women of color. Collins (1990), hooks(1984), Davis (1998a, 1998b), James and Buisa (1993), and othershave argued that focusing solely on gender oppression and neglect-ing racial or class identity is yet another illustration of White privi-lege. To them the White, heterosexual feminists who assume anunproblematized unity of gender oppression amongst all womenhave underplayed the potency of interlocking systems of oppression,neglecting particularly the effects of race and class. Recently Whitefeminists have begun to acknowledge their own complicity in this sit-uation and to question the accuracy of their own analyses. I end thischapter by reviewing analyses of these interlocking systems that drawon the critical theory tradition, focusing particularly on the work ofbell hooks and Angela Davis.

Critical Theorizing as the Exercise of Male PrivilegeIt is no surprise, to many feminists, that the classical canon of crit-ical theory is produced by men. Given the unequally genderedaccess to the resources that make all kinds of theorizing possible—a room of one’s own, for example—it is very predictable that somany theoretical traditions (at least as far as the publishing of texts


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is taken to represent a tradition) would be male-dominated. AsLuke (1992) observes, “Critique and action are not generally avail-able to unwaged housewives or, for that matter, to half the laborforce of women working double jobs in predominantly part-timeclerical and service employment, and in full-time child care, sex-ual and domestic service work” (p. 30). Theorizing of all kinds is,in this analysis, skewed in favor of men. From this perspective, therevolutionary intent of Gramsci’s aphorism that “all men are intel-lectuals” becomes tinged with a cruel and unintended irony.Weiler’s (2001b) edited collection of feminist engagements withmale critical theorists constantly points out this irony. She argues,“Historically, the exclusion of women from the public sphere hasmeant that men alone had access to the resources that allowedthem to become socially respected and acknowledged intellectu-als. As a result, men have claimed the authority to speak for all, todefine human concerns” (p. 1). Luke (1992) too observes that “crit-ical inquiry . . . is fixed most profoundly to gendered privilege”since social structures “have historically situated the male individ-ual at the center of theoretical, public discourse” (p. 29).

When we turn to the particular discourse surrounding the edu-cational practice of critical theory, we can see that, in Lather’s(2001) words, it is “still very much a boy thing” (p. 184). To Lathercritical theory focuses too much on male concerns and experiencesthat are explored against the backdrop of male locations. It alsoexhibits a “masculinist voice of abstraction, universalization, andthe rhetorical position of ‘the one who knows’ (p. 184). Drawingon the work of psychologists such as Chodorow (1989) and Gilli-gan (1982), Luke (1992) hypothesizes that the male sense of selfis a separatist sense, and that the male “expresses relationalitythrough the production, competition, control and exchange of ob-jects and objectifies others (e.g. knowledge, commodities, nature,women)” (p. 43). For Luke, however, this is not an essentialistanalysis. These characteristics, which are often assumed to begenetically wired, are political constructs. They are the result of aprocess of cultural socialization that assigns competitive rational-ity to men and collaborative nurturance to women.

To feminist critics the male domination of critical theory and itseducational implementation in critical pedagogy has consequencesthat work against women’s interests. Perhaps the most important is


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that the analysis of patriarchy as a central prop of dominant ide-ology is undertheorized. Heterosexual marriage, homophobia,childrearing as female-only work, women’s economic dependenceon men—the whole “set of interrelations among men that allowmen to dominate women” in Hartmann’s (1995, p. 189) words—receives occasional genuflections but little else. In discourse influ-enced by critical theory, there is not enough sustained analysis,using female-authored texts that reflect the wide range of positionsin feminist scholarship, of how “in capitalist societies a healthy andstrong partnership exists between patriarchy and capital” (p. 189).As the body of work seeking to implement the educational tasksand promises of critical theory, the literature of critical pedagogyis also criticized for its neglect of gender issues. It creates, inEllsworth’s (1992) view, “the category of generic critical teacher . . .young, White, Christian, middle-class, heterosexual, able-bodied,thin, rational man” (p. 102). In a narrow sense this ignores the factthat the feminization of the teaching profession means a largenumber of women are engaged in critical work. In a broader senseit mistakenly perpetuates the illusion that there is one standard-ized form of critical practice available to teachers and one idealtype of educator (male) able to execute it effectively.

This chapter explores the way in which some feminists who havebeen influenced by (but refuse to be constrained within) the criti-cal theory tradition have fought the illusions and misunderstandingsoutlined above. I begin by exploring how feminist critics and edu-cators have engaged with the men of critical theory—particularlyMarx, Habermas, and Foucault—to fight the gender blindness inthe tradition and to develop a gendered criticality. I then review theserious criticisms many feminists have made concerning the “mas-culinist prescriptive understanding” (Lather, 2001, p. 186) thatinforms much writing on the educational application of critical the-ory (that is, critical pedagogy). These criticisms focus on the unac-knowledged role of the teacher as potential oppressor, the alienatinglanguage of critical discourse, and the ways that emancipatory inten-tions (such as bringing students into voice) can be experienced asarrogant and condescending by those who are supposed to be thetarget of liberatory practices. I conclude the chapter by exploringthe works of two contemporary African American feminists, bellhooks and Angela Davis. The work of both these theorists is locatedat the intersections of critical theory, feminism, and racial analysis.


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Both draw explicitly on Marx and subsequent critical theorists(Marcuse and Freire in particular), but both believe the critical tra-dition needs to be reconfigured to focus on gender and race aswell as class.

Gendering MarxIn the 1960s and 1970s a vigorous debate began between Marxismand feminism as women intellectuals and activists attempted toaddress the gender blindness in Marx’s work, while integrating itsrevolutionary insights into the women’s movement. Whole collec-tions of articles were published on the unhappy marriage of Marx-ism and feminism (Sargent, 1981) with some arguing for a moreprogressive union (Hartmann, 1995), some questioning whetherthe marriage could be saved (Ehrlich, 1981), and some ponderingwhether a trial separation was called for (Vogel, 1981). In a promi-nent essay (first published in the 1970s), Hartmann (1995) arguedthat both Marxist and feminist understandings were necessary todisentangle the ideology and practice of patriarchy. For Hartmann“the struggle against capital and patriarchy cannot be successful ifthe study and practice of the issues of feminism is abandoned”(p. 195). This was because “a struggle aimed at only capitalist rela-tions of oppression will fail, since their underlying supports inpatriarchal relations of oppression will be overlooked” (p. 195).This position significantly extended Horkheimer’s insistence (doc-umented in Chapter One) that critical theory was dominated by“a single existential judgment” (Horkheimer, 1995, p. 227) con-cerning the need to abolish the exchange economy of capitalism.

Subsequent analyses have underscored the force of the femi-nist critique of Marxism. Benhabib and Cornell (1988), for exam-ple, feel that the gender blindness of Marx requires a paradigmshift for Marxism toward the articulation of “a minimal utopia ofsocial life characterized by nurturant, caring, expressive and non-repressive relations between self and other, self and nature” (p. 4).Perhaps the most consistently expressed criticism concerns Marx’semphasis on the ways in which the conditions of industrial laborwere emphasized as the overarching source of contemporary alien-ation. Since working-class, male laborers were most subject to theseconditions, the suggestion was that these were the people mostinjured by alienation. Marx’s analysis of alienation focused itself


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almost entirely on how the forces of commodification and objecti-fication played themselves out on the shop floor.

In Luke’s view it is clear that in Marxism “alienation is positedas a male condition” (Luke, 1992, p. 31). The domestic work ofchildbearing and childrearing is not seen as inherently alienatingin this analysis. Luke points out that in Marx’s references to domes-tic labor “the products of that labor (meals, clean clothes, social-ized children) do not confront and alienate the domestic worker”(p. 31). To her Marx implies that “the natural, unwaged (private)labor of species production, family and child care, by virtue of beingoutside visible exploitation and appropriation by the capitalist wagesystem, constitutes a non-alienating condition” (p. 31). Others, suchas MacKinnon (1981) and Gimenez (1997), contest this vision ofMarx, arguing that implicit in his work is an analysis of patriarchythat highlights its indispensability to capitalism. To Gimenez, forexample “the control exerted by the capitalist class over its own con-ditions of reproduction and over the conditions necessary for thereproduction of the laboring classes determines, in the last instance,the nature of the relations between the sexes and the relative sig-nificance of the family within social classes” (Gimenez, 1997, p. 81).

In the 1970s a vigorous debate was initiated regarding the alien-ating nature of housework and the degree to which domestic laborrepresented a form of unwaged capitalist exploitation. Summariz-ing the materialist feminist perspective Hennessy and Ingraham(1997) argued, “women’s cheap labor (guaranteed through racistand patriarchal gender systems) is fundamental to the accumula-tion of surplus value—the basis for capitalist profit-making andexpansion” (p. 3). Amongst a growing number of feminists whodeclared themselves socialists, the organization of work and familylife in industrial America was analyzed as representing a sexual divi-sion of labor that was necessary to the efficient functioning of cap-italism (Kuhn and Wolpe, 1978).

Prominent among such theorists was Zillah Eisenstein (1979)who argued that capitalism and patriarchy were inextricably inter-twined and that “the sexual division of labor is at the structural andideological base of patriarchy and capitalism” (Eisenstein, 1990, p.134). Capitalism required ordered production, a line of authoritystretching from stockholders to managers to supervisors to shopfloor workers. In Eisenstein’s view, “male supremacy as a system of


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sexual hierarchy supplies capitalism . . . with the necessary orderand control” (p. 135). Learning to accept such control as legitimateand natural was “necessary to the smooth functioning of society andthe economic system” (p. 135). One of the primary sites in whichchildren and adults of both sexes learned to accept the legitimacy ofpatriarchy, and in which they learned to enact this system of control,was the nuclear family. As we shall see later in this chapter, much ofbell hooks’ work focuses on how the family is the crucible in whichpeople learn a “politic of domination” (hooks, 1989, p. 175).

The 1980s brought a critical analysis of this position with writ-ers such as Barbara Ehrenreich arguing that “the family, so longreified in theory, looks more like an improvisation than an insti-tution” (1990, p. 275). As many males simply exited the nuclearfamily, it became harder to argue that the family was the prime sitewithin which patriarchy was learned. Writers such as Vogel (1983)also pointed out that women’s oppression predated the onset ofcapitalism and was not exclusive to capitalist societies. Addition-ally, concerns were raised about the alienating nature of socialistfeminist language that could itself become oppressive. For exam-ple, in an impassioned denunciation Christian (1990) declaredherself “appalled by the sheer ugliness of the language, its lack ofclarity, its unnecessarily complicated sentence construction, its lackof pleasurableness, its alienating quality” (p. 573). To her, such lan-guage “mystifies rather than clarifies our condition, making it pos-sible for a few people who know that particular language to controlthe critical scene” (p. 572). The control of feminist discourse by asmall cadre of White academic feminists is a theme echoed laterin this chapter by both bell hooks and Angela Davis.

Critiquing Habermas and FoucaultIn recent years some critically inclined feminists have conducteda sustained engagement with Habermas and Foucault, both ofwhom are seen as having particular relevance for feminist analysis.Habermas’ communicative theory of learning, and his analysis ofthe lifeworld as a potentially emancipatory hedge against theswamping of life by the systems of money and power, have receivedparticular attention from feminists interested in the ways in whichcritical theory can be reconfigured to serve women’s interests. In


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her opening essay of a volume of feminist scholarship reappraisingHabermas, Meehan (1995) opines that his work “offers a frameworkfor analyzing the structure of modern life, its potential for bothemancipatory forms of life and forms of life issuing in politicalrepression, market manipulation and domination” (p. 1). She feels,however, that this analysis is in need of gendering, of being reap-praised in terms of how it can inform specifically the emancipationof women.

One example of a feminist development of Habermas’ thoughtis Braaten’s (1995) reframing of the idea of communicative ratio-nality as communicative thinking. Just as Habermas sees commu-nicative rationality as rooted in discourse communities, so Braatensees communicative thinking as rooted in discourse communitiesarising out of expressions of feminist solidarity. In such groups soli-darity is realized through the exchange of women’s stories of strug-gle against patriarchy. The thinking demanded in such exchangesis “defiantly holistic” (p. 157) according to Braaten, since “it seeksintricacy, complexity and multidimensionality” (p. 157) in under-standing the multilayered nature of women’s experiences.

But while Habermas has been a departure for some contem-porary feminists, they have also criticized his work. Fraser (1995)and Fleming (1997), for example, argue that he overemphasizesthe split between the system and the lifeworld. In their view whenHabermas stresses how the repressive steering mechanisms ofmoney and power dominate the system, he conveys the implicit as-sumption that the lifeworld tends to resist these pressures. Fraser(1995) argues strongly that this system-lifeworld split is oversim-plified and that feminist empirical analyses of familial decisionmaking, handling of finances, wife battering, and so on haveproved “that families are thoroughly permeated with, in Haber-mas’ terms, the media of money and power” (p. 28). By overstat-ing the contrast between the capitalist economy and family life,Fraser feels that Habermas “blocks the possibility of analyzing fam-ilies as economic systems that is, as sites of labor, exchange, calcu-lation, distribution, and exploitation” (p. 28). She also criticizeshim for restricting the analysis of power to bureaucratic contextsand urges that he place more attention on domestic patriarchalpower, on recognizing that “actions coordinated by normativelysecured consensus in the male-headed nuclear family are actionsregulated by power” (p. 29).


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Foucault has also received critical approbation from some con-temporary feminists who have built on his analysis of the way knowl-edge generated within dominant discourses (such as the assumptionthat male thought is inherently more rational and therefore supe-rior) inevitably supports existing power structures and relations(such as patriarchy). They appreciate particularly his understand-ing of the complexities of the exercise of power and surveillanceand his placing the analysis of sexuality at the center of his con-cerns. In Sawicki’s (1991) view, “feminist appropriations of Fou-cault have resulted in pathbreaking and provocative social andcultural criticism” (p. 95) such as studies of anorexia nervosa,female desire, and the social construction of femininity. Lather(1991) and Gore (1993) have made particular use of Foucault intheir critique of the essentialist certainties of critical pedagogy.They draw on his emphasis on the uncontrollability and oppres-sive dimensions of supposedly rational, emancipatory practices andhis acknowledgment of the unpredictability and contextuality ofeducational practice. Foucault’s work, in their view, helps move crit-ical theorists toward a pedagogical stance that is “tentative and con-textual in confronting complicity, incompleteness, and dispersion”(Lather, 2001, p. 188), and that leads to “the construction of com-plicated, disturbed answers” (p. 191).

Sawicki (1991) does acknowledge the criticism made by somefeminists that “Foucault’s discourses on subjectivity, power and resis-tance threaten to undermine the emancipatory project of feminism”(p. 96). After all, stressing how opposition movements can them-selves manifest unintended oppressive tendencies “might underminethe self-assertion of oppositional groups and suppress the emergenceof oppositional consciousness” (p. 107). But Sawicki values above allthe element of productive uncertainty that Foucault brings to theanalysis of political action. Drawing on Foucault, she argues that“one must always feel uncomfortable with one’s political principlesand strategies lest they become dogma” (p. 103). Consistent withMarcuse’s assertion that critical theory must always be critical ofitself, and West’s belief in the continuing relevance of propheticpragmatism, Sawicki values the openness to experimentation andrejection of fixed strategies that she feels Foucault’s analysis bringsto contemporary feminism. This emphasis is confirmed by Lather(2001) who feels that it is important to be “reflexive without being


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paralyzed” (p. 191) and that postmodern and poststructuralist per-spectives are helpful in informing reflexively considered action.

Feminist teachers who draw on critical theory in their effortsto work critically have returned again and again to the importanceof questioning the uncritical application of Marx, Habermas, orFoucault to their attempts to fight patriarchy through education.Grounding their work in specific classroom contexts, these edu-cators stress the naiveté of assuming that teachers can work un-problematically for the emancipation of learners, particularly adultlearners whom those teachers view as peers. In stressing the arro-gance and condescension of assuming that one can bring studentsinto voice, or empower them to exercise agency, feminist critiquesof critically inclined pedagogy undermine the confidently mascu-line tone they hear in its texts. Practiced in a feminist key, criticalpedagogy is never innocent, never uncomplicated, never withoutcontradictions. Specific practices (such as putting students into cir-cles, running leaderless discussion, or adopting learning journals)are analyzed not as inherently emancipatory but as sometimesemphasizing teacher power and increasing students’ sense of beingunder covert surveillance. It is to a deeper exploration of this analy-sis that we now turn.

Deconstructing Critical PedagogyIn recent years an enormous amount of interest has been gener-ated by the attempt to derive educational practices from the studyof critical theory. Most of this work has focused on analyzing howteachers can help adult learners realize and confront the control-ling power of dominant ideology. As a shorthand descriptor, theterm critical pedagogy has been given to this body of practice, andin recent years a vigorous discourse has been generated aroundthis work. There are numerous texts exploring critical pedagogy,an annual conference devoted to studying the pedagogy and the-ater of the oppressed, and even a newly created doctoral degree incritical pedagogy. In adult education the critical pedagogy dis-course is one of the dominant discourses informing work aroundcritical reflection and transformative learning.

Critical pedagogy as articulated most prominently by McLaren(1995, 1997) and Giroux (1983, 1988) focuses on galvanizing


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students’ oppositional consciousness and helping them translatethis into action. Feminist analyses of critical pedagogy frequentlyplace it as the realization through educational practice of criticaltheory. Lather (1992), for example, describes critical pedagogy as“constructed out of a combination of Frankfurt School critical the-ory, Gramscian counter-hegemonic practice and Freirean consci-entization” (p. 122). Gore (1993) underscores how the languageof critical pedagogy is “borrowed from Neo-Marxism, the CriticalTheory of the Frankfurt School, and oppositional politics gener-ally” (p. 109).

Drawing explicitly on Marx, Gramsci, and Habermas, criticalpedagogy emphasizes the struggle of teachers and students to fightclassism, racism, and sexism inside and outside their classrooms.Part of this struggle involves the creation of democratic dialogwithin educational communities, part of it entails teachers work-ing as organic, critical, or transformative intellectuals to connectclassroom learning to broader social movements. Central to thisstruggle is an emphasis on the agency of teachers and students inclassrooms and communities who learn how to advocate for socialjustice, how to work tactically and strategically to advance the inter-ests of the disenfranchised, and how to confront and underminedominant ideology.

The variant of critical pedagogy represented by Freire’s work(Freire, 1994) has had particular resonance within adult education.Its focus is on helping adults analyze their experiences collabora-tively and critically so they can uncover the knowledge, insights, andskills they possess that will help them fight their own oppression.Although Freire developed his own ideas on educational method-ology while working with illiterate adults in northeast Brazil, hiswork has found a receptive audience in North America and Europe.For example, in a series of provocative books that focus on thespecifics and contradictions of dialogic, democratic practice, IraShor, and his sometime coeditor Caroline Pari, interpret Freire’sideas in the context of American higher education (Shor, 1987a,1987b, 1992, 1996; Shor and Pari, 1999, 2000).

Freire has himself assisted the extension of his work to NorthAmerican contexts by holding a series of conversations with Amer-ican-based educators such as Shor (Shor and Freire, 1987), Don-aldo Macedo (Freire and Macedo, 1987), and Myles Horton


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(Horton and Freire, 1990). In these conversations he explores con-cepts and practices that are of concern to feminists such as bring-ing students into voice, the importance of inclusionary practices, theco-construction of curriculum through problem-posing education,and the extension of democratic communication. As a result, Freirehas had a significant influence on feminist pedagogy, being quotedextensively (and often approvingly) by such ideologically diverse writ-ers as the Women’s Ways of Knowing (Belenky and others, 1986)group, Antonia Darder (2002), and bell hooks (1994). Along withFoucault, he is one of the most highly quoted male theorists in thisdiscourse. Gore’s (1993) book analyzing critical and feminist dis-courses of truth acknowledges the contributions of both these mento emerging efforts at feminist pedagogy.

Freire’s work has not been uncritically received, however. Somefeminists, including hooks (1994) herself, take Freire to task for theunequivocal certainty they hear in his voice and his lack of seriousengagement with feminist perspectives. Weiler (2001a) notes that inan interview with Macedo (Freire and Macedo, 1995), Freire talksin general terms of “ ‘the feminists,’ as though there were a singlemovement or voice” (p. 81) and that he fails “to analyze the under-lying patriarchal assumptions of the European intellectual traditionfrom which his own thought has emerged” (p. 81). Others, such asKenway and Modra (1992) comment on the worrying aura of hero-worship that obscures a critical appraisal of his work. In their words,“it looks very much as if Freirean idolatry is taking the place of thedevelopment of critical consciousness in the very project of liberatoryeducation itself ” (p. 157). Weiler (2001a) echoes this criticism andnotes that Freire “never put forward a self-critique of his tendencyto glorify the revolutionary leader” (p. 76). She laments that his “fun-damental framing of oppression remains in class (and occasionallyracial) terms” (p. 79) and how this framing leads him to imagine therevolutionary hero “as male and as existing solely within the publicworld, a vision which discounts the world of personal relationshipsor of everyday life—the world of women” (p. 76).

But perhaps the most serious and sustained feminist criticismof how critical theory has been translated into pedagogical practicehas focused on the work of Giroux and McLaren, the strand of crit-ical pedagogy that draws clearly and explicitly on critical theory viaMarx, Habermas, and Gramsci. The reverberations that were pro-


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duced by Ellsworth’s (1992) critique of the (to her) unwarrantedmasculinist certainties of critical pedagogy and the responses ofGiroux and McLaren to this, are, as Lather (2001) notes, still in theair. Some of the general criticisms of the Giroux-McLaren strand ofcritical pedagogy made by feminists are that there is a remarkablelack of self-criticality evident in critical discourse, that the discourseis itself oppressive and functions as a form of repressive tolerance(though Marcuse’s use of this term is not invoked), and that theteacher as benevolent, freedom-fighting agent of emancipation isunproblematized. To them there is a paternalistic arrogance—asense of “teacher knows best”—pervading critical pedagogy. Moreparticular criticisms focus on the unacknowledged impossibility ofrealizing Habermas’ ideal speech situation, the contradictionsof encouraging voice amongst learners, and the lack of specificityaround vague notions of empowerment. In the next few paragraphsI review both these general and more specific criticisms.

As already mentioned, a general lack of self-criticality in thediscourse of critical pedagogy is commented on by several feministcritics. For example, Gore (1992) writes “the ‘self-critical’ natureclaimed for critical discourses seems more rhetorical than actual”(p. 60), and “the possibility that their own academic constructionof critical pedagogy might not be the emancipatory discourse it isintended to be is rarely articulated by these theorists” (p. 60). Ken-way and Modra (1992) criticize in particular the lack of engage-ment with feminist theorizing such theorists exhibit. Writing ofmale critical pedagogues they assert, “it is uncommon for them toeither examine the gendered assumptions embedded deeply andsubtly in their theoretical premises or to grasp the full significanceof the presence and power of gender in educational settings”(p. 138). Given that critical pedagogues claim that they are “quin-tessentially engaged in democratizing the educational process”(p. 138), Kenway and Modra conclude that “this failure to engagewith feminism casts considerable doubt on their authenticity”(p. 138). As Luke (1992) observes, for critical pedagogues simplyto cite a few prominent feminists in passing does not constitute asustained engagement with the complexities of this perspective.

A second criticism of critical pedagogy articulated in feministanalyses concerns the ways in which its discourse, supposedly eman-cipatory in intent, becomes oppressive in its functioning. The


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substance of this criticism concerns the authoritative tone perme-ating discussions of the teacher’s presumed emancipatory author-ity. By foregrounding the teacher’s role as central, criticalpedagogy’s discourse implies that without a teacher’s presenceadults will be too ideologically duped to discern their manipula-tion. Gore (1993) finds the concept of the teacher’s emancipatoryauthority as actively dangerous “in the extent to which it primarilyfunctions to emancipate both the theorist and the teacher fromactively worrying about inconsistent effects of their pedagogy” (p.102). She explores typical emancipatory practices such as havingstudents rather than teachers facilitate classes and builds on a Fou-caultian perspective to argue that “in this specific pedagogical tech-nique, the circulation of power is, potentially, both repressive andemancipatory” (p. 120).

Ellsworth’s (1992) study of her class on antiracist practice atthe University of Madison is one of the most quoted empirical stud-ies in critiques of the potentially oppressive nature of critical ped-agogy. Although she does not cite Marcuse’s (1965) analysis ofrepressive tolerance (discussed in Chapter Seven), it seems to methat she provides a telling example of how that process works.Ellsworth observes how her classroom discussions around race andgender worked to exclude those they were designed to include,and how they exacerbated the very racist, sexist, classist, andauthoritarian conditions they were designed to ameliorate. Sheargues that notions of empowerment, learner voice, dialogue, eventhe idea of being critical, “are repressive myths that perpetuate rela-tions of domination” (p. 91). For her the discourses and practicesof critical pedagogy “were working through us in repressive ways,and had themselves become vehicles of repression” (p. 91).

One of the chief sources of oppression that the feminist cri-tique of critical pedagogy reveals is the way the pedagogical roleitself is conceived. When the teacher as freedom fighter is at thecenter of the discourse, there is a grave danger that those who arethe “target” of emancipatory efforts will see chiefly the paternalis-tic arrogance of critical teachers. In Orner’s (1992) view, criticaleducators mistakenly believe they are the only ones who trulyunderstand patriarchy and ideological subjugation. In this scenarioOrner believes that “the only people who get ‘worked over’ are thestudents” (p. 87) who are the unwitting target of educators who


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are presumed to be free of ideological distortion and oppressivetendencies. However, as Ellsworth (1992) writes concerning herown attempts at emancipatory pedagogy, “I cannot unproblemati-cally bring subjugated knowledges to light when I am not free ofmy own learned racism, fat oppression, classism, ableism, or sex-ism” (p. 99). Teachers’ have their own positionalities which mustbe taken into account just as much as those of their students.

Much of the feminist critique of critical practice concerns thedivision between the “us” of critically aware teachers and the“them” of ideologically duped students. This distinction is inher-ent in critical theory’s formulation of ideological control. Ideologyis learned, hegemony is embraced, and control is internalized bythe masses with only a few enlightened individuals able to pene-trate the ideological smokescreens that obscure the reality of unjuststructures. Feminists of a poststructural persuasion such as Gore(1992, 1993) and Lather (1991, 1992, 2001) have been particularlyadept at highlighting the contradictions of such a position. It is notthat this position is inherently arrogant. Ideological control cer-tainly exists and some are clearly better than others at detecting itspresence. The problem is rather that a sense of total certainty creepsinto the minds of those critical educators who are convinced of thecorrectness of their ideological reading of the world. The readingmay indeed be correct; but as soon as it is taken for granted it be-comes as potentially oppressive as dominant ideology.

Gramsci, Marcuse, Foucault, and West are amongst those whourge strongly the need for critical theory to retain a degree of self-criticality and to be ever on the alert for its own reification. Thefeminist critique underscores this necessity. In Gore’s (1992) viewthe us/them relationship becomes problematic when the focus isonly on the “them” of learners. As she points out, “When the agentof empowerment assumes to be already empowered, and so apartfrom those who are to be empowered, arrogance can underlieclaims of ‘what we can do for you’” (p. 61).

A particular concern of feminist critics of critically inclined peda-gogy is the emphasis in its discourse on bringing students into voice.Giving voice, discovering voice, encouraging voice, and finding voiceare phrases frequently used to describe practices designed to developin learners a confidence to name the world in ways that feel accurateto them and that match their experiences. There is an assumption


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that people who have found their voices speak in ways that representthe core of their being. Instead of speaking the language of the op-pressor, with its self-blaming vocabulary, adults who have found theirvoices are thought now to speak in ways that truly represent who theyare. The agent who facilitates this finding of authentic voice, theleader on the trek of aural discovery is, of course, the teacher.

Three problems are raised by feminist critics regarding the dis-course and practice of helping learners discover their voices. First,there is the questionable modernist assumption that a core authen-tic self exists which can find true expression in a certain voice. Thisis a form of highly dubious essentialism. As Orner (1992) pointsout, “Calls for student voice in education presume students, voices,and identities to be singular, unchanging and unaffected by thecontext in which the speaking occurs” (p. 80). Second, there is thepresumption that when this voice is spoken the truly attentive crit-ical teacher will recognize its presence. This grants to the teachera potentially oppressive degree of control to define what is trueand authentic. Thirdly, there are many times when speaking inone’s voice is clearly not safe. Critical pedagogy cannot assume thatteachers have the power to create speech safety zones in their class-rooms that are free of prejudice and hate. Those who feel theyhave managed to do this are, in the eyes of feminist critics, foolingthemselves in a very dangerous way. As Ellsworth (1992) points out,it is mistaken for critical teachers always to assume that silence rep-resents voicelessness or loss of voice. This view “betrays deep andunacceptable gender, race, and class biases” (p. 105) and neglectsthe possibility that silence is often a politically sophisticated, de-liberate choice. Orner (1992) and Ellsworth (1992) observe thatstudents will not speak when they perceive threatening body lan-guage amongst peers, when the teacher is not viewed as an ally,when they have bad memories of speaking out in the past, and whenthey resent having to teach privileged students about the nature ofoppression.

Feminism as a Transgressive Pedagogy: bell hooksA critical appraisal of voice is offered by the African American the-orist, bell hooks, in her analysis of feminism, Talking Back (hooks,1989). hooks acknowledges that for women of color in working-


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class communities “coming to voice is an act of resistance . . . a wayto engage in active self-transformation and a rite of passage whereone moves from being object to being subject” (p. 12). However,she shares the skepticism of Orner, Ellsworth, and others regard-ing the idea that each of us has a unique voice representing ourindividual identity and declares herself more interested in thestruggle of groups to recover their collective voice, a voice “em-bodying collective reality past and present, family and community”(p. 31). hooks is also skeptical of the way oppositional voices caneasily be co-opted by the dominant culture. Although she does notcite Marcuse directly, her analysis of the way dominant cultureneuters criticism, while appearing to encourage it, is very close toMarcuse’s description of repressive tolerance. She writes “in awhite-supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal state where the mecha-nisms of co-optation are so advanced, much that is potentially radi-cal is undermined, turned into a commodity” (hooks, 1989, p. 14).

This commodification is achieved by radicals themselves who,in their eagerness to communicate with as many people as possi-ble, find themselves using metaphors and analogies that reinforcedominant ways of knowing. In hooks view, “it is easy for the mar-ginal voice striving for a hearing to allow what is said to be overde-termined by the needs of that majority group who appears to belistening, to be tuned in” (p. 14). In an effort to connect with themajority group, radicals are tempted “to describe and define expe-rience in a language compatible with existing images and ways ofknowing, constructed within a social framework that reinforcesdomination” (p. 14).

The quotes above illustrate how hooks works within the criti-cal theory tradition, though she draws less frequently and explic-itly on particular authors and ideas from that tradition than Davis.Nonetheless, her work is replete with references to concepts famil-iar within critical theory. In Talking Back (1989), for example, shewrites of the commodification of knowledge, the reification andcommodification of Blackness and the way this leads to alienationand estrangement, and the ways “women can and do participate inpolitics of domination, as perpetrators as well as victims” (p. 20).Her comments on the politicization of love (hooks, 1989, p. 6) drawon Freire and can therefore be connected to Freire’s own readingof Fromm. She also returns again and again to the importance of


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class analysis, so strongly argued by Marx, and to the importanceof attaching a critique of capitalism to any attempt to understandBlack experience. In her talking book with Cornel West, she la-ments “the reluctance of Black people to engage in any critiquesof capitalism today” (hooks and West, 1991, p. 100). She notes how“we deal with White supremacist assault by buying something tocompensate for feelings of wounded pride and self-esteem” (p. 98)and how “murder can be justified in pursuit of the right status sym-bol, e.g. a pair of sneakers” (p. 99).

For hooks class analysis must always stand alongside the analy-sis of racism and sexism. In Where We Stand: Class Matters (hooks,2000b), she laments the fact that in critically inclined conversation“the uncool subject is class” (p. vii) and that “there is no organizedclass struggle, no daily in-your-face critique of capitalist greed thatstimulates thought and action-critique, reform and revolution”(p. 1). The fact that much feminist analysis concentrates on gen-der oppression is seen by her as a reflection of the way the con-cerns of White middle-class women have come to be universalizedas the concerns of all. In her view “had poor women set the agendafor feminist movement they might have decided that class strugglewould be a central feminist issue” (hooks, 1984, p. 61).

Additionally, the analysis of class and gender oppression can-not be conducted without attention to racism. In Feminist Theory(1984), she argues that “class structure in American society hasbeen shaped by the racial politic of white supremacy” (p. 3) andthat “it is only by analyzing racism and its function in capitalist soci-ety that a thorough understanding of class relationships canemerge” (p. 3). Hence, “class struggle is inextricably bound to thestruggle to end racism” (p. 3), and race and class issues should be“recognized as feminist issues with as much relevance as sexism”(p. 25).

So in hooks’ view feminism is not an attempt to gain equalitywith men but a fight against the whole ideology and practice ofdomination constituted by the interlocking systems of sexism,racism, and classism. Since women’s identities are fundamentallyaffected by all three systems, she argues that “feminist thoughtmust continually emphasize the importance of sex, race and classas factors which together determine the social construction of femaleness” (hooks, 1989, p. 23). That this has not generally


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happened is a central critique of Feminist Theory (1984) wherehooks critiques feminism consciousness-raising because it “has notsignificantly pushed women in the direction of revolutionary poli-tics” (p. 159). Her experience of feminist consciousness-raisinggroups is that they have not done enough to help women under-stand how capitalism works to exploit female labor, reinforce sex-ism, or create an addiction to consumption. Neither hasconsciousness-raising pushed women to learn about alternate polit-ical systems such as socialism.

In Talking Back (1989), hooks defines feminism specifically as“a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination” (p. 24) andpoints out how sexism is “the practice of domination most peopleare socialized to accept before they even know that other forms ofgroup oppression exist” (p. 35). The family is an important loca-tion for people to learn patterns of domination whether this islearning how to discriminate against others or learning to acceptthe right to be dominated. Even in single-parent families with nomale figure “children may learn to value dominating, authoritativerule via their relationship to mothers and other adults” (p. 36).Given that domination involves a mix of class, racial, and genderoppression, any attempt to challenge the “politic of domination”(hooks, 1989, p. 175) must involve fighting all three systems. Onecannot just confront gender oppression “since all forms of oppres-sion are linked in our society because they are supported by similarinstitutional and social structures” (1984, p. 35). Any attempt tochallenge sexism also involves fighting racism and classism, just asany attempt to challenge racism involves confronting sexism andclassism, and so on.

hooks identifies some of the specific elements of contempo-rary ideological domination in Teaching to Transgress (1994). Chiefamongst these are the belief that deep racism doesn’t exist any-more, that any Black person who works hard enough can becomeeconomically self-sufficient, that women have gained equality withmen to the extent that White males are now the victim of minori-ties and domineering women, and that those who are poor andunemployed are in that state by choice. Ideological dominationmaintains itself by the fact that people have “a lack of meaningfulaccess to truth” (p. 29) so that they view the ideology describedabove as self-evidently true. In hooks’ view, “this collective cultural


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consumption of and attachment to misinformation is coupled withthe layers of lying individuals do in their personal lives” (p. 29).Such self-delusional mendacity only serves to rob people of thenecessary energy for change. This ideological double whammy ofcultural socialization and personal self-delusion means that “ourcapacity to face reality is severely diminished as is our will to inter-vene and change unjust circumstances” (p. 29).

An important element in combating the “collective culturalconsumption of and attachment to information” described aboveis adult education. Unlike many of the theorists addressed in thisbook, hooks lays out an educational agenda for combating ideo-logical domination in quite specific terms. Central to this agendais the reliance on small groups as crucibles for feminist conscious-ness-raising and, hence, resistance. In terms that call to mind Hor-ton’s work at Highlander, hooks argues that small groups areparticularly suited to the integration of critical analysis into dis-cussions of personal experiences. Small groups more easily allowfor the democratization of conversation, and they stress the impor-tance of an oral sharing of information, which reduces the relativedominance of White academic feminists. As such they are good set-tings for “the politicization of the self that focuses on creatingunderstanding of the ways sex, race, and class together determineour individual lot and collective experience” (hooks, 1989, p. 24).

hooks has less to say about the pedagogy of small groups, how-ever, than she does about her own practice within formal class-rooms. She views the feminist classroom as an arena of struggledistinguished by a striving for a union of theory and practice. Oneof the most striking elements in her analysis is her emphasis on theinevitability of teacher power and the ways in which its exercise isoften unavoidably, even necessarily, confrontational. In her judg-ment the role of teacher “is a position of power over others” withthe resultant power open to being used “in ways that diminish orin ways that enrich” (hooks, 1989, p. 52). She freely admits thatsometimes the exercise of power to force people to confront theirown uncritical acceptance and practice of dominant ideology isfraught with risk. To emphasize the commitment students shouldhave to the learning of others, hooks takes attendance, a practicereminiscent of elementary school for many skeptical adult students.To underscore the importance of attendance she lets students


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know that poor attendance negatively affects their grade. Sherequires all to participate in class discussion, often by reading outparagraphs they have already written. Such practices inevitably leadto negatively critical comments by students, a fact that she admitshas been difficult for her to accept. Because “many students findthis pedagogy difficult, frightening, and very demanding” (hooks,1994, p. 53), teachers who use it are bound to be resisted, even dis-liked. This is why hooks insists that students’ perception of theclassroom as a safe, positive, or congenial environment for learn-ing is not a good criterion to use in assessing teacher competence.

In emphasizing the kinds of confrontational practices outlinedabove, hooks demonstrates her liking for pedagogic flexibility. Inmethodological terms, she comes close to Cornel West’s positionof critical pragmatism, whereby the pursuit of revolutionary endsis distinguished by a continuous readiness to experiment with dif-ferent approaches. hooks believes that “to make feminist class-rooms the site of transformative learning experiences, we mustconstantly try new methods, new approaches” (1989, p. 54). Inreflecting on her pedagogy in Teaching to Transgress, she observesthat “there could never be an absolute set agenda governing teach-ing practices. Agendas had to be flexible, had to allow for sponta-neous shifts in direction” (1994, p. 7). One interesting authorialmanifestation of her experimental disposition is her use of thepseudonym bell hooks (her real name is Gloria Watkins). By usinga pseudonym, she frees herself to leave behind ways of thinkingthat now seem inaccurate, without feeling she has somehow com-promised her basic identity. As she puts it in Talking Back (1989),“In using the pseudonym I consciously sought to make a separa-tion between ideas and identity so that I could be open to chal-lenge and change” (p. 163). The public perception of her as bellhooks frees her “to change perspectives, to let them go if neces-sary, to admit errors in my thinking” (p. 163).

Finally, hooks’ privileging of openness and inclusivity is seen inher willingness to work with Whites and with males in the struggleagainst White supremacy. Once again, the similarities between herstance and that of Cornel West’s on this issue are apparent. Bothemphasize that confronting systemic forces requires allies drawnfrom all segments of society, and that the building of such alliancescan be done without compromising one’s racial identity. In hooks’


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view refusing to work with Whites in the struggle against Whitesupremacy “is a gesture that undermines my commitment to thatstruggle” (hooks, 1989, p. 118). Similarly, in critiquing exclusivelyanti-male conceptions of feminism, she argues that such an ori-entation alienated many non-White, poor, and working-classwomen from the feminist movement. Such women believe “thatthey have more in common with men of their race and/or classgroup than bourgeois white women” (hooks, 1994, p. 68). In par-ticular, Black men and women are united by the ties of collectivestruggle for liberation.

Since men as well as women suffer from being bound by rigidlyconceived stereotypical sex roles, hooks believes that fighting toend sexism is something that benefits men as well as women. Inher intentionally populist primer and manifesto Feminism Is forEverybody (2000a), she writes that, although most men are dis-turbed by patriarchal violence against women, the fear of givingup what they see as the benefits of patriarchy means that “they findit easier to passively support male domination even when theyknow in their minds and hearts that it is wrong” (p. ix). If only men had an accurate understanding of feminism as a fight to endsexism (and by implication to end racism and classism) “theywould find in feminist movement the hope of their own releasefrom the bondage of patriarchy” (p. ix). This is why feminism—the fight to end sexism—is for everybody, and why a man who isstruggling to recognize and challenge the advantages he gainsfrom patriarchy “is a worthy comrade in struggle, in no way a threatto feminism” (p. 12).

More particularly, hooks believes that “men have a tremendouscontribution to make to feminist struggle in the area of exposing,confronting, opposing, and transforming the sexism of their malepeers” (hooks, 1984, p. 81). Indeed, she argues that without maleinvolvement the feminist movement can never fully realize its trans-formative intent. Hence, “feminist consciousness-raising for malesis as essential to revolutionary movement as female groups . . .Males of all ages need settings where their resistance to sexism isaffirmed and valued” (hooks, 2000a, p. 11). The insistence on thephrase “of all ages” is telling. Men learning how to confront andchallenge sexism are truly engaged in a lifelong project that hooksbelieves we should regard as life-saving. For her “a wise and loving


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feminist politics can provide the only foundation to save the livesof male children” (p. 71). This foundation can be laid both in all-male groups whose members try to recognize the ways their ownsexism harms themselves as well as those they live with, and alsothrough men’s struggle to live in anti-sexist ways with women.

One final element of hooks’ work that is of particular interestto adult educators who wish to draw on critical theory as they con-struct and live out their practice, is her insistence on developingtheoretical work that is accessible to a broad group of people whilelosing none of its power to critique. Recalling Gramsci’s unwittinglysexist aphorism that “all men are intellectuals” (1971, p. 9) hookswrites that “everything we do in life is rooted in theory” (2000a,p. 19) and that “we all use it in daily life” (1989, p. 38). Since the-ory is no more than an underlying system of understandings thatshape thought and practice, it “is not an alien sphere” (p. 38). The-ory, like feminism, is for everybody, and people “practice theoriz-ing without ever knowing/possessing the term” (hooks, 1994,p. 62).

However, although everybody is a theoretician, many peopleare intimidated by the language of feminist theory. This is ironicsince feminist theory, like critical theory, has a deliberately libera-tory intent. But in hooks’ view, the dominance of feminist dis-course by White women academics, overly influenced by Frenchpost-structuralism, has meant that for many working women fem-inist theory “is synonymous with that which is difficult to compre-hend, linguistically convoluted” (hooks, 1989, p. 36). Feministtheory has become “a narrow constricting concept” (p. 36) to theextent that “it reinforces the fear, especially on the part of the ex-ploited and oppressed, that the intent of theorizing is not to lib-erate but to mystify” (p. 37). When this happens the radical,subversive potential of theory is clearly undermined. If the trans-formative purpose of theory is to be realized, hooks believes it mustbe written in accessible terms. In her view “theory cannot becomethe groundwork for feminist movement unless it is more accessi-ble” (p. 39).

Creating theory that is accessible, yet that has critical power, re-quires some important shifts in direction for feminists, accordingto hooks. First, academics must rid themselves of the conceptionthat “speaking about one’s personal experience or speaking in sim-


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ple language is . . . a sign of intellectual weakness or even anti-intellectualism” (hooks, 1989, p. 77). This is why the commitmentby feminist pedagogy to education for critical consciousness muststress the exploration of personal experiences and “start with ex-amining the self from a new, critical perspective” (p. 109). How-ever, the examination of experiences must not slide into anuncritical celebration of everyone’s stories, or a series of untheo-rized personal disclosures. hooks believes feminist educators “mustwork to link personal narratives with knowledge of how we mustact politically to change and transform the world” (p. 111). Theremust also be a renewed effort on the part of feminist theorists “tospeak simply with language that is accessible to as many folks aspossible” (p. 77). This means that colloquialisms, slang, the lan-guage of the streets must be used to communicate the insights offeminism to those that habitually use that language.

If feminism is to be a mass movement to end sexism, thenthere is little point, according to hooks, in using theoretical lan-guage understood by only a small cadre of intellectuals. As she putsit, “If I do not speak a language that can be understood, then thereis little chance for dialogue” (p. 78). For radical intellectuals ofcolor like herself, the issue of language is particularly crucial sincea rejection of familiar, colloquial speech patterns that representdistinctive aspects of a person’s racial heritage and identity “is oneof the ways we become estranged and alienated from our past” (p.80). This has led hooks to experiment with methods of expressionthat risk the opprobrium of her peers. Just as Cornel West was seenby some as straying from the intellectual straight and narrow byrecording his CD “Sketches of my Culture,” so hooks has been crit-icized for venturing into children’s literature with her book Happyto be Nappy (hooks, 1999).

Angela Davis: Theorist of Transformative StruggleMaking theory accessible so that it can transform society has alsobeen a major concern of Angela Davis. In a more consistently ex-plicit manner than hooks, however, Davis has always drawn openlyon her grounding in Marxism, and her acquaintance—personallyas well as theoretically—with figures in the critical theory tradition.In many ways she has remained one of the most prominent socialist-


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feminists, continually interpreting women’s issues (housework,rape, abortion rights) in the light of capitalism’s systematic sup-pression of women of color and poor women in general. It is clearto Davis that “there are forces in society that reap enormous bene-fits from the persistent, deepening oppression of women” (Davis,1990, p. 13), but it is also clear that it is not men as an undifferen-tiated group that are responsible. Rather, it is particular men (andparticular women) who constitute the subalterns of the ruling class.Davis writes that “within the existing class relations of capitalism,women in their vast majority are kept in a state of financial servi-tude and social inferiority not by men in general, but rather by theruling class. Their oppression serves to maximize the efficacy ofdomination” (Davis, 1998a, p. 185). Hence, any feminist analysisshe conducts starts from an understanding that “the structures offemale oppression are inextricably tethered to capitalism” (p. 185).

Her early interest in Marx led Davis to become a student ofMarcuse as she saw how “he maintained a sense of the connected-ness between emerging social movements and his larger philo-sophical project” (Davis, 1998b, p. 22). At his suggestion Davisspent some time in Frankfurt, Germany, where she attended lec-tures by Adorno and Habermas, amongst others. On her return tothe United States, she joined the Communist Party and becameinvolved with the Black Panther movement. Whilst teaching phi-losophy at UCLA (and fighting to keep her job), she became in-creasingly involved with activism focused on prisoners’ rights. Asher public profile as a Black communist grew, she began to receivedeath threats to the extent that campus security guards wouldcheck her car for bombs as she left work each day. To provide off-campus security for herself, she legally purchased and registeredtwo handguns, and accepted protection from a variety of body-guards. One of these was Jonathan Jackson, the younger brotherof George Jackson, one of the famous Soledad Brothers (Jackson,1970) indicted for the murder of a guard in Soledad prison.

In August 1970 Jonathan attempted to gain publicity for theSoledad Brothers by traveling to Marin County, north of San Fran-cisco, entering a courtroom and, along with the prisoners on trial,taking the judge, Harold Haley, the district attorney, and severaljury members hostage. One of the guns he used was registered inAngela Davis’ name. In the courtroom car park, Jackson, the judge,


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and two prisoners were shot and killed while the district attorney,several jurors, and a third prisoner were wounded. Davis (who wasin Los Angeles at the time) was named as an accomplice and wentunderground for two months before being arrested in New Yorkas one of the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” criminals. Whilst in prisonDavis worked as co-counsel on her defense and produced her ownprison writings (Davis, 1971a). In February 1972 she was releasedon bail (after the California supreme court abolished the deathpenalty), and in June 1972 she was acquitted by a jury of all chargesagainst her. In her account of the trial, Aptheker (1999) docu-ments how it triggered a worldwide movement for Davis’ release.

Her public notoriety—celebrated by the left, demonized by theright—has meant that, in Joy James’ words, “her writings are sur-passed in the popular mind by her iconographic status” (1998,p. 19). Yet, after her acquittal she returned to activism, teaching andresearch, and for the last thirty years has published analyses that con-sistently link issues such as rape, female incarceration, and women’sblues to a larger context of social and political oppression. In James’words, Davis “radicalizes feminism through a class and antiracistanalysis and offers new constructions” (p. 15) by exploring “inter-sectional analyses of Marxism, antiracism, and feminism” (p. 15).

Davis herself argues that her use of the term feminist is con-stantly evolving and that she rejects any single definition. For her“the most effective versions of feminism acknowledge the variousways gender, class, race, and sexual orientation inform each other”(Davis, 1998a, p. 304). Feminism is always linked in her mind with“substantive, radical institutional transformation” and specific polit-ical action such as “agendas for jobs, student funding, health care,childcare, housing, reproductive rights” (p. 304). She has neverabandoned the perspective, grounded in critical theory, that per-sonal relationships (including those that are abusive), feelings (ofalienation, racial hatred or misogyny), cultural forms (blues songs,rap, TV sit-coms), and specific social structures (such as educationor the prison system) must always be understood as part of a widersystem of capitalist exploitation. Like hooks, Davis returns us againand again to Horkheimer’s single existential judgment of theimportance of abolishing the exchange dynamic of capitalism, butshe does so with a contemporary focus on how that dynamic under-scores racism and sexism.


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Her autobiography, written immediately after her acquittal inthe early 1970s, is full of descriptions of moments when critical the-ory illuminated the connections between capitalism and racism.Perhaps the most dramatic of these intellectual events was herreading of The Communist Manifesto which hit her “like a bolt oflightning” (Davis, 1974, p. 109). The vivid intellectual awakeningthis occasioned is worth quoting in her own words:

I began to see the problems of Black people within the context of a large working class movement. Like an expert surgeon, thisdocument cut away cataracts from my eyes . . . It all fell into place.What had seemed a personal hatred of me, an inexplicable refusalof Southern whites to confront their own emotions, and a stubbornwillingness of Blacks to acquiesce, became the inevitable conse-quence of a ruthless system which kept itself alive and well byencouraging spite, competition and the oppression of one groupby another. Profit was the word: the cold and constant motive forthe behavior, the contempt, and the despair I had seen [p. 110].

Nearly quarter of a century later, she continued to acknowl-edge how the manifesto gave her some of her basic conceptualtools for an analysis of “what we now call intersectionality, or therelationship between race and class” and for a way “to think aboutsocial change in a way that moved beyond an exclusive focus onrace” (Davis, 1998b, p. 19). As well as using Marxist concepts suchas alienation (Davis, 1971b) throughout her work, Davis also exem-plifies the Marxist notion of using philosophy to change the world.Like hooks, Gramsci, and others in the critical tradition, Davisregards philosophizing as an activity open to all people, a normalpart of daily reality. She speaks of her own philosophical practiceas “a quotidian way of living in the world” (1998b, p. 17), and inan interview with George Yancy declares “the theme of my work,of my life, has been the attempt to use whatever knowledge, skills,and wisdom I may have acquired to advance emancipatory theoryand practice” (p. 29). Such work is “part of a tradition of struggle. . . connected with a collective effort to bring about radical socialchange” (p. 29).

For the past three decades Davis has been concerned to mounta critique of capitalism and to combat the ideologically convenientbelief that the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of Eastern Europe


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marks the triumph of capitalism. In her view capitalism has beenfrighteningly successful in spreading its own ideological justification,to the point where it is now seen as the “natural” way of orderingeconomic affairs to billions of people across the globe. Its crises andcontradictions are veiled by people’s readiness to view unemploy-ment, homelessness, declining public services, and an assault on wel-fare as events as much outside their control as are flash floods orhurricanes. Corporations relocate to countries where labor is cheapand nonunionized and where pollution controls are nonexistent.The communities they abandon are left jobless, prey to the drugtrade, and lacking the tax base to fund decent education or welfaresystems. Their only growth industry is crime and, “in a horrifyingand self-reproducing cycle” (Davis, 1998a, p. 67), the only jobs cre-ated to replace those that have left are in the prison sector.

Davis laments that “the vast expansion of the power of capital-ist corporations over the lives of people of color and poor peoplein general has been accompanied by a waning anticapitalist con-sciousness” (1998a, p. 67). In a 1998 interview she stated her beliefthat “the expansive globalization of capital has led to a predicamentin which the everyday lives of people are even more directly andintimately affected by capital than, say, twenty years ago” (1998b,p. 28). This is why, in her view, “the project of developing explicitlyanticapitalist theories and practices is of greater importance nowthan ever before” (p. 28). Davis’ own engagement in this projecthas focused on illuminating the ways racism and women’s oppres-sion are accepted as part of dominant ideology, as creations of cap-italism necessary to its own successful functioning.

In an anthology of prison writings produced while she was in-carcerated, Davis wrote of the “millions of Americans whose senseshave been dulled and whose critical powers have been eroded bythe continual onslaught of racist ideology” (1971a, p. 25). Some-times this ideology is overt, but at other times “open, explicit racismhas in many ways begun to be replaced by a secluded, camouflagedkind of racism” (1998a, p. 65). In particular, racism has been sub-tly strengthened by an “ideologically produced fear of crime”(p. 65) which has led to “the naturalization of black people as crim-inals” (p. 67). If Black people are successfully demonized as in-nately criminal, then the disproportionate numbers of them whoare imprisoned ceases to be remarkable. As these numbers grow


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more and more, prisons become a source for capital investment, atrue growth industry, so that “the ideological construction of crimeis thus completed by the material construction of jails and prisons”(p. 69).

Davis’ writings on women’s issues also consistently place thesewithin a broader critique of capitalism. In a collection of essays onWomen, Culture and Politics (1990), she traces “the parallels betweensexual violence against individual women and neocolonial violenceagainst people and nations” (pp. 36–37). In the same volume sheargues that the fact that Black women’s health was so harmed inthe 1980s by reductions in Medicaid coverage, lack of prenatalcare, and the closure of abortion clinics due to loss of funding ispart and parcel of an ideology that declares that those in poweralways know best. She identifies a number of “political forcesresponsible for the violation of Black women’s health rights” suchas the “increasing militarization of our economy” and the “generalassault on democracy” (p. 62). In her words, “It is no coincidencethat a government that would sabotage the rights of every citizenof this country by permitting the development of a secret juntacontrolled by the Central Intelligence Agency and the NationalSecurity Council also seriously infringed upon the health rights ofBlack women and all poor people” (p. 63). Davis’ essay “Peace is aSisters’ Issue Too” also argues that Black women’s liberation can-not just be understood as a battle against racist attitudes. Instead, itmust be considered as part of a larger project of economic andsocial transformation. Given that “nuclear bombs do not know howto engage in racial discrimination” (p. 68), Davis argues that peaceis not “a white folks issue” nor “an abstract state of affairs” butrather “inextricably connected with our ability to achieve racial,sexual and economic justice” (p. 69).

For adult educators some of the most provocative elements ofDavis’ writings are her analyses of the liberatory power of educa-tion and in particular the need to build multiracial coalitions andalliances in the struggle to unmask and confront dominant ideol-ogy. She traces her own formation as an educator back to the be-havior of her parents. By her own account her disposition toward acritical, philosophical stance was “a consequence of my parents’encouragement to think critically about our social environment”(1998b, p. 17). Her parents taught her “not to assume that the ap-


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pearances in our lives constituted ultimate realities” and “to lookbeyond appearances and to think about ways in which we would,with our own agency, intervene and transform the world” (p. 17).Central to this effort to penetrate the obfuscations of dominantideology was a critically inclined education. Davis declares that “Ilearned very early to value education and its liberatory potential.. . . Education and liberation were always bound together” (1998a,p. 316).

Since Davis believed that “liberation was not possible withouteducation” (1998a, p. 316), it was only natural that she shouldbecome a powerful scholar-activist. One of her earliest involve-ments was in the Liberation School organized by the Los Angelesbranch of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. Inher 1974 autobiography she describes this as “a place where polit-ical understanding was forged and sharpened, where conscious-ness became explicit and was urged in a revolutionary direction”(1974, p. 183). The belief that education is inherently political hasinformed all her later work. She argues that education should givepeople the tools to critique capitalism, penetrate ideology, andhelp them realize that their individual situations can only beimproved if they build alliances across race and gender identities.Transformative education can never be an individual process inDavid’s view, and neither can it be successful if it is restricted to aparticular group. Over and over again she emphasizes the need toally with others in the struggle for social transformation.

At the heart of Davis’ credo of transformative struggle is thephrase “lift as we climb,” the motto of the National Association ofColored Women’s Clubs (founded in 1896). To “lift as we climb”is to ensure that “we must climb in such a way as to guarantee thatall of our sisters, regardless of social class, and indeed all of ourbrothers, climb with us” (Davis, 1990, p. 5). This effort to build asocial movement across lines of race and gender, rather than onebased on a single racial or gender identity, must, for Davis “be theessential dynamic of our quest for power—a principle that mustnot only determine our struggles as Afro-American women, butalso govern all authentic struggles of dispossessed people” (p. 5).

One of the most important dimensions of this struggle is thebuilding of “a revolutionary, multi-racial women’s movement thatseriously addresses the main issues affecting poor and working class


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women” (p. 7). Such a movement would involve Latina, Asian, andalso White women. Davis clearly sets out her belief that membershipof a movement for struggle on behalf of one group is open to peo-ple of all groups, not just those immediately affected by an act of dis-possession. Much as do West and hooks, Davis rejects the Africentricemphasis solely on African cultural values as those that shouldinform the struggle of Black people. She writes, “We do not draw thecolor line. The only line we draw is one based on our political prin-ciples” (p. 7).

An insistence on building coalitions across race and gendersprings partly from Davis’ suspicion of an uncritical espousal of thepolitics of race identity. In a provocative passage, she warns of thedangers of “ethnic solipsism,” of focusing solely on one’s racial andethnic formation and the struggle to satisfy needs of members ofone’s cultural group: “Ethnic solipsism is something we have alwaysattributed to whiteness, Eurocentrism. Do we want to accept thenotion that discourses about race are essentially about black/whiterelations? As if to suggest that if you are not either black or white,then you are dispensable?” (Davis, 1998a, p. 227). For Davis polit-ical commitments and beliefs are what unite people in collectivestruggle, not racial identity. She asks “how would you define ‘one’sown group’? For African-Americans, would that include every per-son who meets the requirements of physical appearance or everyperson who identifies as African-American, regardless of their phe-notype? Would it include Republican African-Americans who areopposed to affirmative action?” (p. 229). She points out that “anAfrican-American woman might find it easier to work together witha Chicana than with another black woman whose politics of race,class, gender, and sexuality would place her in an entirely differ-ent community” (p. 229). Hence, “what counts as black is not soimportant as our political commitment to engage in anti-racist,anti-sexist, and anti-homophobic work” (p. 229).

As a Marxist, Davis views identity as politically constructed, partof the ideological superstructure of capitalism. What is perhapsmore surprising is her criticism of those seeking a unique and dis-tinctive theory of philosophy of African American woman-ness. Asa prominent African American woman intellectual Davis is some-times categorized as a Black feminist, yet this is a label she strenu-ously resists. In fact her own understanding of feminism is fluid:


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“My own conception of myself as a feminist constantly evolves as Ilearn more about the issues that women’s movements need toaddress” (Davis, 1998a, p. 304). Feminism is a discourse with arange of positions, theories, categories, and commitments and inher view the most effective versions of feminism acknowledge thevarious ways gender, class, race, and sexual orientation inform eachother. In her interview with George Yancy, she argues that “thereis no such thing as Black feminist theory” (Davis, 1998b, p. 25) ifthis is seen as a unitary body of work. There are Black feminist the-ories representing a range of positions, but no one single sharedperspective. Davis urges people “not to assume that racialized iden-tities have always been there” and “not to adhere to rigid cate-gories, to the idea that there is something called African-Americanwoman-ness, some essence we can discover” (1998a, p. 300).

Equally, Davis is skeptical concerning claims of a shared women’sunity. In common with hooks, she realizes that one’s gender positionmust always be understood in the light of one’s race or class positions.Observing that in her view, “there has been a rather naïve approachto women’s unity, just as there has been a rather naïve approach toBlack unity” (Davis, 1998b, p. 25), she concludes that unity cannotbe grounded solely in racial membership or gender. Skeptical of afocus on unity for unity’s sake, she argues that “unity needs to be pro-duced politically, around issues and political projects” (p. 25).

There may be a generalized unity around the need to over-throw capitalism but this can only be realized in struggles aroundparticular issues—health, rape, abortion rights, prison reform, andso on. In this her position is close to Foucault’s analysis of the needfor intellectuals to locate themselves in specific sites around spe-cific struggles, and also to the activist emphasis of Gramsci’s notionof the organic intellectual. However, activist intellectuals must bewary of reproducing the racial politics of the outside world in theirown social movements. Thus, in the struggle for social justice “itwill be imperative for whites to accept the leadership of Black peo-ple,” in fact “for black people to provide the leadership for the totalstruggle” (Davis, 1974, p. 182).

What lessons can be drawn for the practice of adult educationfrom Davis’ analysis of collective struggle? It seems to me that firstand foremost is the support she provides for the recognition thatall adult educational practice is theoretically informed. Adult edu-


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cation discourse often distinguishes between theory and practice.There is an implication that some people (usually professors ingraduate schools of adult education who publish a great deal injournals or write books on critical theory) are theoreticians whileothers (usually those who do not hold a graduate degree in adulteducation and publish little or nothing) are practitioners. Withinthis distinction is embedded an implicit hierarchy. Professor-theoreticians are responsible for the high-level cognitive process oftheorizing, in which concepts (andragogy, critical reflection, trans-formative learning) are produced, insights (such as the socialnature of transformative learning, the need for critically reflectivemirrors, the importance of the adult educator’s role modeling) aregenerated, and hypotheses (such as the prediction that placinglearners into circles helps democratize discussion or that usinglearning journals builds learners’ confidence to speak and write intheir own voice) are produced. Practitioners such as basic educa-tion teachers, organizational trainers and community activists arethen responsible for implementing in their daily work the theoret-ical insights produced by academics within their universities. Im-plicitly such practitioners are held to work at much lower levels ofgeneralization and abstraction.

If we accept Davis’ argument that philosophizing and theorizingare quotidian activities—something we cannot help doing on a dailybasis—then this distinction breaks down. Practice becomes inherentlytheoretical, something that either perpetuates or challenges domi-nant ideological beliefs and practices. From this viewpoint one isequally a theoretician whether one teaches philosophy in a university-sponsored, noncredit continuing education course or auto-repair ata community education center. The way we treat adult learners, howwe address them, how we explain our teaching processes to them, theextent to which we encourage peer learning amongst them—theseare all practice acts with strong theoretical underpinnings. We dothese things based on predictive understandings of how we believepeople will respond to our actions and on convictions about what itmeans to act morally. Such understandings and convictions arederived from the empirical data of our experiences rather than frompublished texts, but they are theoretical nonetheless.

A second element of Davis’ work has particular resonance for thosewithin adult education who see their practice as a force for democratic


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political change. If you believe, like Davis, that liberation is not pos-sible without education, then adult education becomes, in her words,“a consciousness-raising vehicle . . . imparting political educationto the community” (1974, p. 183). Many adult educators woulddraw back from equating adult education wholly with politicalconsciousness-raising, but for those who do Davis proposes severalcurricular tasks that bear examination. First and foremost the corecurricular task of adult education interpreted through Davis’ eyesfocuses on understanding and critiquing capitalism. In this she issquarely in the mainstream of critical theory. For her the need tocritique capitalism is even stronger in the twentieth century as theinfluence of transnational and global corporations becomes everbroader, and as the fall of Socialist regimes in Eastern Europe leadspeople to conclude that history proves capitalism to be the naturalway of ordering the economic affairs of life.

Much in the way that Fromm advocates teaching a structural-ized worldview Davis urges that adults caught at the intersectionsof race, class, and gender oppression be taught how to place theirlocal problems within a broad sociopolitical framework. Racism,crime, incarceration, violence, and poor health are all experienceddisproportionately by working-class people of color. However, ide-ological mystification ensures that these economically and cultur-ally created experiences are seen as natural and unavoidableaccompaniments of being born without a White skin on the wrongside of the tracks. Ideology causes people to believe that the sideof the tracks on which they find themselves is a matter of purechance over which there is no control, and that their innate abili-ties fit them for the specific social location in which they find them-selves.

How can people be taught to recognize and challenge how domi-nant ideology works to persuade them to accept as unremarkablean inherently unequal state of affairs? I believe Davis’ work con-tains two implicit pedagogic impulses. The first concerns the col-lectivist nature of teaching. Again and again Davis emphasizes thecollective nature of transformative processes, whether these areconcerned with learners transforming their consciousness, educa-tors transforming their classrooms, or citizens transforming theircommunities. She believes that people need each other to makeany significant change in the world, that those who see things more


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clearly have a duty to help others come to consciousness (we mustlift as we climb) and that the most effective initiatives are thosecharacterized by collective leadership. She is very consistent on theneed for multiracial alliances and for leadership in those alliancesto be non-White.

This position suggests that the methodologies of team teach-ing and cohort learning are best suited to the project of helpingadults penetrate dominant ideology. In this (though she does notdirectly address any of the literature in adult education) she is verymuch in line with a tradition of thought and practice that valuescollective learning. From Lindeman ([1926] 1961), through Hor-ton and Freire (1990) and up to contemporary examinations ofcollaborative inquiry (Yorks and Kasl, 2002), adult cohort learning(Saltiel and Russo, 2001), transformative learning (Mezirow, 2000),and critical reflection (Brookfield, 1995) adult educators have con-sistently emphasized the fact that much crucial adult political edu-cation happens in groups and through engagement in collectivestruggle.

If transformative learning by adult students is a collectiveprocess, then we can legitimately infer that adult teachers mustmodel their own engagement in this process. If we accept thatadult learners are moved closer to engaging in learning that ispotentially transformative by witnessing adult educators modeltheir own public commitment to that process, then team teaching(as against solo teaching) is clearly called for. Team teaching prop-erly conceived and implemented (that is, teaching in which teach-ers plan processes together, are present for all instruction whetheror not they are leading the activity, and debrief their work collec-tively) models a strong commitment to collective learning for adultstudents. Just as Davis believes that transformative struggle calls formultiracial coalitions in which people of color assume leadershiproles, so we can infer that teaching teams that have potentially theprofoundest effect on adult learners are those that are multiracial.In such teams, as in multiracial coalitions, Davis’ analysis suggeststhat senior leadership roles should be taken by non-White faculty.

Of course, team teaching itself is not without its own inherentcontradictions, particularly when imbalances of power and status(real or perceived) exist amongst team members. If we accept Mar-cuse’s admonitions about the ever-present danger of repressive


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tolerance, or Foucault’s analysis of how superficially democratic orapparently collaborative practices can be experienced by learnersas reconfigurations of oppression, then it is clear that the practiceof team teaching risks confirming the very inequities and injusticesit purports to challenge. In my experience a good general rule isthat in multiracial adult teaching teams, White faculty should speaklast and least. On those occasions when White faculty do assumethe lead teacher role, the non-White faculty should make it clearto learners that this is a team decision and that the White facultymember has been asked to assume temporary authority at the spe-cific request of the faculty of color in the team.

One particular pedagogic emphasis implicit in Davis’ work con-cerns the potential of art, particularly popular cultural art formssuch as Blues songs (Davis, 1999), to trigger learning that can leadto revolutionary change. For her Blues performances are “an alter-native site for recovering historical forms of working class women’sconsciousness” (Davis, 1998a, p. 314) and, as evident in the workof ‘Ma’ Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday, they inform thedevelopment of a distinctive Black feminism (Davis, 1999). In thisregard Davis echoes Gramsci’s emphasis on the importance of pop-ular culture to revolutionary movements and, perhaps more inten-tionally, follows in the footsteps of her mentor Marcuse. As ChapterSeven records, Marcuse believed strongly in the productivelyestranging nature of artistic experiences, attributing to these thepower to encourage rebellious subjectivity in adults. Similarly, Davisbelieves that artistic experience is “a special form of social con-sciousness that can potentially awaken an urge in those affected byit to creatively transform their oppressive environments” (Davis,1990, p. 199).

Her analysis contains some discernible differences from thatof Marcuse, however, in that she takes more seriously the role ofexplicitly political art as a force for social change. Marcuse’s em-phasis on privacy, distance and isolation, on individual engage-ments with art, is downplayed. For Davis, the most transformativeart is created, and experienced, collectively. Also, Davis does nottrace the revolutionary significance of art to the learner’s beingtemporarily subjected to the rigors of a different aesthetic form,whether this be Shakespearean sonnets or cubism. Marcuse allowsa major role for the transformative potential of “high” cultural


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forms. Davis is much more concerned with populist expressions ofdeliberately political impulses. While Marcuse believes there ismore revolutionary potential in the poetry of Baudelaire or Rim-baud than in the explicitly political plays of Brecht, I read Davis asmuch more inclined toward the political theater of Brecht or Boal,or toward the way Blues lyrics challenge racism, rape and patriarchy.

An important function of art for Davis is to be a “sensitizer anda catalyst, propelling people toward involvement in organizedmovements seeking to effect radical social change” (Davis, 1990,p. 200). Davis departs from Marcuse in allowing a role for explic-itly political art. Indeed, she sees a symbiotic relationship betweenradical social movements and particular artistic impulses. To her“progressive and revolutionary art is inconceivable outside of thecontext of political movements for social change” (p. 216). Hence,in her analysis of the fight against slavery she sees spirituals as both“cause and evidence of an autonomous political consciousness”(1990, p. 201) and crucial to an emergent momentum of resis-tance. For Davis spirituals “always served, epistemologically and psy-chologically, to shape the consciousness of the masses of Blackpeople, guaranteeing that the fires of freedom would burn withinthem” (p. 202). Work songs with their familiar call and responsepattern, gospel, and the Blues are taken by her to comprise “anaesthetic community of resistance, which in turn encouraged andnurtured a political community of active struggle for freedom”(p. 202). A song like Bessie Smith’s “Poor Man’s Blues” had spe-cific political intent in that it “evoked the exploitation and manip-ulation of working people by the wealthy and portrayed the rich asparasites accumulating their wealth and fighting their wars withthe labor of the poor” (p. 203).

In the development of a curriculum for revolutionary learning,then, we can see a major role for aesthetic creation, according toDavis. This role is not to produce beauty, or induce an estrange-ment with reality, but to enable the creation of political momen-tum. An adult education program that has as its purpose thedevelopment of political consciousness, particularly consciousnessregarding the exploitation of people of color, should involve morethan the study of critical theory, or the analysis of activist tactics. Itshould entail its participants writing songs, producing plays, film-ing dramatized vignettes of oppression, painting murals, rapping—


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using every aesthetic avenue to create the “strong bonds betweenart and the struggle for Black liberation” (p. 200) that Davis believescharacterizes the history of African American culture. Art createdexplicitly in the service of political struggle, and that addresses thatstruggle’s purpose directly by galvanizing action, plays a crucial rolein social movements in her view.

As this chapter shows, Davis’ explicit focus on transformativestruggle connects her directly to adult education’s recent concernwith transformative learning and education. Davis places herselfsquarely in the tradition of transformative learning as ideology cri-tique. For her the purpose of transformation is to uncover andchallenge dominant ideology. She sees the necessity to critique theinfluence of capitalism in all spheres of life (intimate relationships,personal health, crime, housework, and so on) rather than limit-ing such a critique to the world of politics formally defined. Shealso shares the inclusive orientation of Cornel West and bell hooks,in which people of different colors and genders unite around spe-cific transformative initiatives. In her view the key to successfultransformation is membership in a multiracial alliance, an empha-sis not especially prominent in adult educational treatments of thistopic.

Davis also exemplifies the sort of willingness to engage in self-criticism that is often claimed as being as crucial to critical think-ing (Brookfield, 1987a). Much in the spirit of her mentor, HerbertMarcuse’s, tenet that “critical theory is, last but not least, critical ofitself and of the social forces that make up its own basis” (1989, p.72), she is open to constant critical reappraisal of her own work.She admits that “many of us can be very critical when we are doingour research—but not necessarily in relation to the ideologies thatinform our lives and ideas” (1998a, p. 227) and follows her ownadmonition to “try to take critical thinking seriously” (p. 227). Forexample, she problematizes notions of women’s unity anddescribes her own self-identity as a feminist as constantly evolving.She criticizes Africentrically inclined notions of woman-ness andethnic solipsism, stressing instead the importance of political com-mitment over ethnic identity, and the need for multiethnic al-liances. And, finally, she rejects the conventional wisdom that thefall of Eastern European regimes means there is no longer anyneed for a critique of capitalism. Instead, she argues consistently


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and resolutely that feminist advocacy and women’s liberation in anera of global capitalism must always be tied to a critique of capi-talism. Those involved in the growth industry that is research andscholarship on transformative processes in adult learning and edu-cation ignore her work at their peril.


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Chapter Twelve

Teaching Critically

One of the most frequent assertions of the critical tradition is thatseparating our practice from our theorizing, as if these existed intwo wholly separate domains, is untenable. The tradition sees thesetwo processes as conjoined; on the one hand, all practice is theo-retically informed, on the other hand, theory always contains prac-tical implications. So although this book is “officially” about criticaltheory, it is also, implicitly, about critical practice. In this final chap-ter, then, it seems fitting to review and integrate the pedagogicalsuggestions made by the theorists reviewed in the previous elevenchapters. I do this in three ways. First, I explore what it means toteach critically, arguing that doing this is a matter of focus as muchas method. Teaching critically is not just a question of how weteach. It is also about what we teach. Second, I examine some ofthe methodological approaches that emerge in critical theory’sanalyses. These in no way comprise a unified stance. The previouschapters will have made it clear that there is a considerable eclec-ticism in the methodological injunctions of critical theory. Indeed,sometimes these injunctions seem directly in contradiction. As anexample, consider how Marcuse’s emphasis on the need for pri-vacy, isolation, and cultural detachment stands against Fromm’s orHabermas’ insistence on dialogic teaching, collaborative learning,or the collective creation of knowledge. Finally, I reflect on thepedagogic lessons I have learned in my own experience teachingcritical theory within graduate education.

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The Practice of Teaching CriticallyThe practice of teaching critically is inherent in critical theory’s for-mulations. From Marx’s eleventh thesis on Feuerbach onwards, it isclear that the theory is full of activist intent. Indeed, as Horkheimer(1995) argued in his essay defining critical theory (first publishedin 1936), the theory can only be considered successful if it producesrevolutionary change. Theorizing exists so that people can under-stand the dynamics of political, economic, racial, and cultural op-pression. With that understanding they can then begin to challengethese dynamics and learn to create new social forms, particularly newconditions of labor, that allow them to express their creativity. So toteach informed by critical theory is, by implication, to teach with aspecific social and political intent. Critical theorists intend that theiranalyses and concepts will help people create social and economicforms distinguished by a greater degree of democratic socialism.

Although teaching critically has a transformative impetus, thereare noticeable differences in the ways different theorists pursuethis. However, one theme—the inevitably directive nature of edu-cation—remains constant across all the theorists reviewed in thesepages. Critical teaching begins with developing students’ powersof critical thinking so that they can critique the interlocking sys-tems of oppression embedded in contemporary society. Informedby a critical theory perspective, students learn to see that capital-ism, bureaucratic rationality, disciplinary power, automaton con-formity, one-dimensional thought, and repressive tolerance allcombine to exert a powerful ideological sway aimed to ensure thecurrent system stays intact. Critical thinking in this vein is the edu-cational implementation of ideology critique, the deliberateattempt to penetrate the ideological obfuscation that ensures thatmassive social inequality is accepted by the majority as the naturalstate of affairs. Adults who learn to conduct this kind of critiqueare exercising true reason; that is, reason applied to asking uni-versal questions about how we should live. Two of these questionsmight be: What kind of societal organization will help people treateach other fairly and compassionately? How can we redesign workso that it encourages the expression of human creativity?

This form of critical thinking is, however, only the beginningof critical theory’s educational project. The point of getting

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people to think critically is to enable them to create true democ-racy—what Fromm, Marcuse, West, and others regard as the cor-nerstone of socialism—at both the micro- and macrolevel. If adultsthink critically in this view, they will be demanding worker coop-eratives, the abolition of private education, the imposition ofincome caps, universal access to health care based on need notwealth, and public ownership of corporations and utilities. Criticalthinking framed by critical theory is not just a cognitive process. Itis inevitably bound up with realizing and emphasizing commoninterests, rejecting the privatized, competitive ethic of capitalism,and preventing the emergence of inherited privilege.

Teaching in a manner informed by critical theory is, therefore,teaching that is inherently political. It is political because it is in-tended to help people learn how to replace the exchange econ-omy of capitalism with truly democratic socialism. It is politicalbecause it makes no pretense of neutrality, though it embraces self-criticism. It is political because it is highly directive, practicing, inBaptiste’s (2000) terms, a pedagogy of ethical coercion. This politi-cized emphasis is scattered throughout the history of critical the-ory. It is there in Marx’s belief that the point of philosophy is tochange the world. It is there in Gramsci’s view of the adult educa-tor as a revolutionary party organizer working to direct and per-suade the masses to replace ruling-class hegemony with proletarianhegemony. It is there in Marcuse’s urging the practice of liberat-ing tolerance involving exposure only to dissenting viewpoints andin his acknowledgment that clear differences exist between teach-ers and learners.

Teaching politically is evident too in West’s conception of theadult educator as a critical organic catalyst galvanizing activists ingrassroots oppositional movements. hooks’ recognition of the needfor teachers to confront students with the reality and injuries of dom-inant ideology embodies this directive spirit; so too does Davis’ insis-tence that teaching about women’s issues such as rape, abortion,access to health care, domestic violence, and sexual harassment can-not be separated from a broader analysis of the destructive effectsof capitalism. Foucault’s analysis of how specific intellectuals fightrepressive power at specific sites, Fromm’s belief that learners mustbe taught to realize how individual problems are really produced bystructural forces, and Habermas’ urging that educators illuminate


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how the lifeworld has been invaded by capitalism and bureaucraticrationality—all these indicate the inescapably political nature of criti-cal teaching.

Methodological ApproachesAlthough critical theorists share a common recognition of thepolitically directive nature of education, they do not advance anykind of methodological orthodoxy to describe how such educationshould take place. However, four contrasting methodological clus-ters or emphases are discernible in the work of the writers I havesurveyed. One of these is the importance of teaching a structural-ized worldview, something well conveyed in the title of C. WrightMills’ book The Sociological Imagination (1959). In the preface toOne Dimensional Man (1964), Marcuse wrote of “the vital impor-tance of the work of C. Wright Mills” (p. xvii) that had successfullyinterpreted individual experience in terms of broader social andeconomic forces. A structuralized worldview always analyzes privateproblems and personal dilemmas as structurally produced. At root,this idea is grounded in Marx’s theory of consciousness with itsargument that what seem like instinctive ways of understanding theworld—our structures of feeling to use Williams’ (1977) phrase—actually reflect the material base of society. This idea recursthroughout critical theory in concepts such as the colonization ofthe lifeworld, one-dimensional thought, and disciplinary power.

Two theorists who strongly advocate teaching a structuralizedworldview are Erich Fromm and Angela Davis, though to a degreeall in critical theory advocate this. Fromm’s perspective as a thera-pist and social psychologist is that adults’ intellectual developmentmeans they are much better equipped than children to realize thatforces external to their own whims and inclinations shape their lives.He feels that adults’ accumulated experience of life provides the cur-ricular material that can be analyzed for evidence of the impact ofwider social forces. Davis consistently urges that any teaching aboutwomen’s issues must always illustrate how individual lives are shaped,and injured, by the workings of capitalism. For her this is crucial to the development of political consciousness and to women’s psychological well-being. They learn that what they thought wereproblems visited on them by an arbitrary fate, or the result of


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personal inadequacy, are in fact the predictable outcome of theworkings of capitalism and patriarchy. This is a life-saving realization.

A second pedagogical emphasis in critical theory explores theneed for abstract, conceptual reasoning—reasoning that can beapplied to considering broad questions such as how to organizesociety fairly or what it means to treat each other ethically. Criticaltheorists, particularly Marcuse and Habermas, argue that criticalthought is impossible if adults have learned only to focus on par-ticulars, on the immediate features of their lives. For example, peo-ple need some basis for comparing the claims of various groupsthat they should be treated differently because of their history,race, culture, religion, and so on. As long as we live in associationwith others, there has to be restrictions placed on the liberty ofthose who behave in ways likely to injure others. How we decidewhat these limits should be is based on some broad concepts offairness or social well-being. Your right to smoke a cancer-inducingcigarette cannot be exercised regardless in a small room contain-ing asthma, lung cancer, or emphysema sufferers.

So if living socially requires the development of rules of con-duct that have a level of generality beyond that of individual whims,then we need to be comfortable thinking in broad abstract terms.Deciding which rules should be followed, and how these might beestablished in ways that ensure their general acceptance, are mat-ters that require a level of thought beyond that of saying, “This iswhat I want because it works for me in my life.” Freedom, fairness,equity, liberation, the ethical use of power—all these “big” ideasare central to the critical tradition and all contain a level of uni-versality entailing the exercise of abstract, conceptual thought.

A third element stressed in some variants of critical theory isthe need for adults to become “uncoupled from the stream of cul-tural givens” to use Habermas’ (1990, p. 162) phrase. This momen-tary separation from the demands and patterns of everyday lifeallows them to view society in a newly critical way. Both Gramsciand Marcuse argue that a temporary detachment from social lifeis a necessary spur to critical thought, with Marcuse conducting asustained analysis of how separation, privacy, and isolation helppeople to escape one-dimensional thought. I have argued that thisstrand of critical theory connects directly to adult educators’ con-cern with self-directed learning and the practices that foster this.


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This element in critical theory receives less contemporaryattention probably because privacy is now, as Marcuse admits, aresource available chiefly to the rich. Also, Marcuse’s emphasis onhow a powerfully estranging, private engagement with a work ofart leads to the development of rebellious subjectivity smacks tosome of elitism. It also raises the specter of unrestrained individu-alism, an element of dominant ideology that prompts deep skep-ticism amongst many of a critical cast. Collins (1991), for example,has authored a well-framed critique of the individualist and tech-nicist nature of much of what passes for the facilitation of self-directed learning.

In my own practice I believe there is still a place for separation,privacy, and isolation, despite its compromised nature. One of theapproaches I use in my own teaching—the emphasis on studentsdoing private, separated, and isolated reading of original criticaltheory material before engaging in small group discussion of this—is a small variant of this idea. I believe that self-directed learningstill offers a valuable language and practice of critique and that itcan be interpreted to fit squarely into the radical tradition of adulteducation (Brookfield, 2000). I have also argued that a source ofnecessary detachment can exist in such an unlikely setting as accel-erated learning programs, often regarded as the apogee of fastbuck, cash cow, capitalist adult education (Brookfield, 2003). Anargument can also be made for a greater degree of individual dis-engagement from cohort programs that are often lionized as thebest of alternative adult educational practices. Cohorts can readilyexhibit automaton conformity, generate a tyranny of the majority,and uncritically reproduce dominant ideology.

Cohort groups are themselves one setting for a fourth peda-gogic emphasis in critical theory, that of dialogic discussion. Frommand Habermas are the two theorists discussed who emphasize thisapproach most strongly with both of them viewing a widespreadfacility with dialogic methods as the guarantee of democracy.Fromm’s emphasis on the dance of dialogue in which speakers losetheir ego in a selfless attempt to understand the positions advancedby others is very much a forerunner to Habermas’ ideal speech situ-ation. Both theorists believe that decisions arrived at through fullyparticipatory, inclusive conversation are the cornerstone of democ-


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racy, and both believe education can play a role in teaching adultsthe dispositions necessary to conduct such conversations.

As a teacher I share this dialogic emphasis, though my use ofit has changed greatly over the years. When I began teaching Iviewed discussion leadership as a wholly artistic process, one dis-tinguished by creativity and constant improvisation. I still believethese factors are important in discussion, but they are very far frombeing the whole story. Too often what is justified as a laissez-faireapproach meant to demonstrate the teacher’s refusal to dominateconversation actually serves to bolster wider social inequities thathave been imported into the group. The people who talk the loud-est and longest inside the classroom are often those whose sociallocations mean their voices get the most attention in the world out-side. A misplaced belief that teacher interventions automaticallyrepresent an unwarranted domination also led me to think thatthe best discussion leaders were those who were invisible. If a dis-cussion leader said or did nothing during the conversation to indi-cate his or her role as the teacher, then I used to argue that thisperson was an emblematic adult educator. Now I am not so sure.While remaining silent is a legitimate stance in some situations,there are others in which the teacher is required to be stronglyinterventionist. This does not necessarily mean talking a lot. Onecan be silent, for example, but have played a strong role in deter-mining the inclusive ground rules governing conversation.

I have argued in an earlier book coauthored with StephenPreskill (Brookfield and Preskill, 1999) that most discussions arenot distinguished by automatic goodwill on the part of all partici-pants. After all, most people do not have the chance to practice thekinds of democratic dispositions good discussions require. Idealspeech situations are virtually extinct for many of us. We must notassume that adult education classrooms are safe havens or power-free zones. Neither learners nor teachers leave their racial, class, orgender identities at the classroom door, nor do they forget theirprevious participation in discussions with all the humiliations andmanipulations these often entailed. For an adult education groupto look anything remotely like the egoless dance celebrated byFromm, or the ideal speech situation described by Habermas, itsparticipants will need to evolve and adhere to rules of discourse thatexemplify these features. Since the exercise of these rules cannot


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be left to chance, the group will have to find some way to monitorobservance of these.

Because groups are often unwilling to acknowledge and con-front the hierarchies and power dynamics they import into the class-room, teachers can help illuminate these. Discussion leaders canconsistently draw attention to the need for inclusive models of con-versation such as the circle of voices, circular response, snowballing,or newsprint dialog (Brookfield and Preskill, 1999). They can inter-vene in conversations to stop the most privileged and vociferousfrom dominating by declaring a ground rule that the next coupleof minutes of conversation are reserved for those who up to nowhave not had a chance to contribute. They can also democratize theconversation by advocating the three-person rule. This rule holdsthat once someone has made a comment they are not allowed tocontribute again until at least three other people have spoken. Theonly exception to this is if someone else in the group directly asksa speaker to say more about their original comment. Teachers canalso distribute to the group the results of anonymous student class-room evaluations if these reveal that some people feel shut downand unheard. And they can acknowledge constantly the fact of theirown power and how this is being exercised to create conversationalstructures that equalize participation and prevent the emergenceof an unofficial pecking order of contributions.

The methodological eclecticism evident in critical theory sug-gests that a range of approaches be adopted with adult studentgroups. Given the range of cultural backgrounds, learning prefer-ences, intellectual abilities, and mix of racial, class, and genderidentities evident in many adult education classrooms, a variety ofapproaches and methodologies seems both necessary and in-evitable. Situating pedagogy in the realties of classroom dynamics,cultural traditions, and learning rhythms, while simultaneously at-tempting to introduce people to a critical theory perspective, couldbe described as a kind of critical pragmatism. As an approach topractice, critical pragmatism emphasizes the continuing relevanceand applicability of critical theory’s understandings at the sametime as it takes a self-critical perspective on that theory. In CornelWest’s words, “the degree to which one is willing to be self-criticaland self-questioning” is taken as “a sign of commitment” (West,1999b, p. 295) to critical practice.


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Critical pragmatism also supports an experimental orientationto adult education practice and rejects any one approach as repre-senting the core of critical pedagogy. It views all four emphases dis-cussed in this section as valid depending on the context involved.If anything can be argued as endemic or core to adult education, Ibelieve it is the creation of a moral and political tone in whichadults are treated as adults. And if anything can be argued as coreto critical teaching, it is a focus on the learning tasks—challengingideology, contesting hegemony, unmasking power, and so on—out-lined in Chapter Two. How these tasks are pursued depends on theunique and complex configurations of each adult classroom andon the teacher’s own positionality, talents, and experience.

Reflections on Teaching Critical TheoryIn this section I want to describe some of my own personal expe-riences teaching critical theory to adults. Because I’m a universityteacher, my experience is mostly confined to graduate programsof education and that is the context on which I will focus. Hope-fully, the problematic dynamics of teaching and learning that Idescribe, and my response to them, will illuminate some of thework you do in your own setting.

My work in four specific locations informs this chapter. The firstis my full-time home institution, the University of St. Thomas inMinneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota. Since 1992 I have taught coursesat St. Thomas in which critical theory comprises some of the corematerial. For example, in teaching for the educational leadershipprogram, my course on Leadership as Critical Reflection defines crit-ical reflection as the deliberate attempt to unearth and researchassumptions regarding the legitimate exercise of power in educa-tion. Additionally, critical reflection is defined as the uncovering ofhegemonic assumptions; that is, assumptions about the practice ofeducational leadership that are embraced as common sense andmorally desirable but that actually work against practitioners’ bestinterests and serve to keep an unfair system intact. Consequently,Leadership as Critical Reflection requires students at the outset ofthe course to engage with Foucault and Gramsci. Also at St. ThomasI have taught a number of different courses in the doctorate in Crit-ical Pedagogy (as far as I know the only such doctorate in existence).


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The focus of this program is squarely on the critical tradition andthe ideas reviewed in this book are core to the theoretical founda-tion for the program.

A second setting for teaching critical theory is National LouisUniversity’s (Chicago) doctoral program in adult education. Since1992 I have served as a part-time consultant to the doctoral programand a member of the visiting teaching faculty. The NLU doctoralprogram explicitly situates the study of adult education within itssocial and cultural context. Critical theory, along with Africentrism,feminism, and postmodernism are some of the chief theoretical par-adigms explored. Teachers College at Columbia University (NewYork) is a third context in which I have worked with the ideas of criti-cal theory. From 1982 to 1992 I worked as a full-time professor in theadult education doctoral program, and since 1992 I have conductedoccasional workshops at the Center for Educational Outreach andInnovation, one of which is titled Critical Theory and Adult Learn-ing. Finally, in 2002, as visiting professor at Harvard University, Itaught courses in the Graduate School of Education, one of whichwas titled Critical Theory and the Practice of Adult Education. Mostof the chapters in this book were included in that course’s materialsand were read and critiqued by the students who attended.

ResistanceOn the face of it, the contexts described in the preceding para-graphs seem, at the very least, benign. The students have enrolledto study educational leadership, critical pedagogy, or adult educa-tion and have sometimes shown up for courses where critical the-ory is prominent in the course title. So it may seem surprising tosee this section headed “Resistance.” But my experience has taughtme that the one fact on which I can depend in this work is that stu-dents will resist, often quite strongly, learning about this tradition.Five elements in critical theory seem to present particular prob-lems for them in terms of provoking resistance: the emphasis onMarx, the critique of capitalism the theory entails, the questioningof democracy (particularly the identification of the tyranny of themajority), the difficult language used by critical theorists, and theradical pessimism induced by constantly reading analyses that em-phasize the power of dominant ideology and the way it effectively


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forestalls any real challenge to the system. Let me deal with thesein turn turning first to the issue of “Marxophobia.”

One of the first things I do when teaching critical theory is posi-tion it as a response to Marx (much in the way I positioned criticaltheory in the first chapter of this book). I do this as a matter ofscholarly honesty. Since I believe Marx’s work to be the foundationand fulcrum of critical theory—its theoretical starting point—itwould be disingenuous not to make this clear. Hearing this is diffi-cult for some students who ask, “Does this mean I have to be aMarxist to study critical theory?” The rampant Marxophobia com-mented on by McLaren and West in Chapter One means that anybody of work connecting to Marx’s ideas, no matter how criticallythese ideas are examined, is immediately deemed suspect. Studentswith a strong commitment to values of individuality, liberation, andcreativity—the same values emphasized (as Fromm points out) inMarx’s manuscript on alienated labor—see reading Marx almost asan unpatriotic act. It is as if by opening the pages of The German Ide-ology (Marx and Engels, 1970) or Marx’s Concept of Man (Fromm,1961), one is rejecting democracy, free speech, even America itself.

It is important to say that it is not only third- or fourth-generationAmerican students who have this difficulty. Students from formercommunist regimes who have fought in wars, suffered the loss offamily members, seen the disappearance of livelihoods, and beenforced into exile by those regimes also have an understandable vis-ceral reaction to Marx’s association with critical theory. It doesn’tseem to matter how many times I point out that critical theorists un-equivocally condemn the automaton conformity, surveillance, andone-dimensional thought they see in totalitarian communism, orhow many times these theorists assert the primacy of true democ-racy. Once Marx is mentioned—unless it is to denounce anythingassociated with him—you’ve immediately created a problem in sev-eral students’ minds.

So how do we respond to this situation? One thing I try to doearly on in any course is emphasize the self-critical nature of criti-cal theory itself and how this critical perspective is applied to Marx’swork as well as to capitalist ideology. I quote Gramsci’s warningagainst the idolatry of Marx, Marcuse’s insistence on the need totake a critical approach to critical theory, West’s essay on the indis-pensability yet insufficiency of Marxist theory, and the blindnesses


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of race and gender in Marx identified by hooks, Davis, Karenga, andothers. A useful resource here is Noam Chomsky’s essays on “TheLeninist/Capitalist Intelligentsia” (Chomsky, 2002) and “Marxist‘Theory’ and Intellectual Fakery” (Chomsky, 2002).

Chomsky, one of the most prominent leftist scholar-activists inthe United States, has a long record of public ideology critique, sohis credibility is strong. He is scathing about the way Marxism-Lenin-ism reveals, in his view, strong elements of authoritarianism and con-descension. These are seen most prominently “in the very idea thata ‘vanguard party’ can, or has any right to lead the stupid massestowards some future they’re too dumb to understand for themselves”(Chomsky, 2000, p. 226). Chomsky views Marx as a theorist of capi-talism who has an interesting abstract model of how capitalism func-tions, but one that can be improved on, refined, and broadened. Hesays he hasn’t “the foggiest idea” (p. 228) what “dialectics” meansand admits that “when I look at a page of Marxist philosophy or lit-erary theory, I have the feeling that I could stare at it for the rest ofmy life and I’d never understand it” (p. 228). For many students thisis enormously reassuring! I also construct an early assignmentaround a critical appraisal of Marx. This assignment asks students toidentify omissions, ethical blind spots, and inconsistencies in Marx’swork as well as to consider points of connection or resonancebetween their experiences or practices and his ideas.

It is important to stress, however, that Marx should not be in-troduced so circumspectly as to rob his ideas of any force or power.There is a thin line between encouraging a healthy skepticism ofMarx, or of any theorist, and predisposing people to dismiss him.The point is not to set him up for easy demolition but to demon-strate that a serious reading of Marx can happen without studentsfeeling they somehow have to “convert” to Marxism. So at the sametime as affirming students’ right to disagree with and condemnMarx, I also affirm my right as a teacher to insist they engage himbefore they ritualistically dismiss him.

Furthermore, if students’ engagement does lead to their dis-missing his work, it is not enough for them to dismiss him out ofhand. I invite, even require, students to be critical of Marx, but Iask that these criticisms be specific. Students are expected to pro-vide page citations and direct quotes that indicate those aspects ofhis work they most take exception to. It is not acceptable only to


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make general criticisms such as Marx is antidemocratic, misun-derstands the natural competitiveness of human beings, or has noawareness of the complexities of cyberspace or the postindustrialworkplace. If these criticisms are leveled, I ask that each of thembe illustrated by at least three specific references to his work. Theseshould be either quoted verbatim in the paper or their location inhis work indicated clearly enough for me to be able to find the rel-evant passages.

The second source of resistance critical theory induces con-cerns its critique of capitalism. Recall the “single existential judg-ment” offered by Horkheimer (1995) that critical theory’s chiefproject is studying how to abolish the exchange economy of capi-talism. A critique of capitalism—the way it commodifies creativityand labor, makes reason its servant, reduces friendships and inti-mate relationships to the exchange of personality packages, andfuels spiritual malnourishment—is threaded throughout criticaltheory. One reason this disturbs students so much is because theyrecognize features of their own life in this critique. But I think thedeeper impact of this critique is that it calls into question the pro-fessional location, and by implication, the professional practicesand personal identities of the students themselves.

Many of my students work in corporate America, the apogee ofcapitalism. They live in a country where capitalism is propoundedas dominant ideology, as obviously a “good thing” that supportsadmired values of freedom, liberty, and individuality. Capitalism islauded for the prosperity it brings, the technological advances itstimulates, and the way it disseminates the innovative spirit of entre-preneurship amongst the population. For those working at theheart of capitalism to hear a sustained critique of its workings, anda documentation of its injuries, is highly threatening.

This is why it’s important, early on, to get students to distinguishbetween capitalism’s ideology and functioning and their own rolein the system. There are many who work in corporate America whobelieve strongly in the need for workplaces to be locations for theexercise of human creativity and who think they are working tohumanize an inhuman system. When students in my courses readthe manuscript on alienated labor, they find it expresses many oftheir own misgivings about their own workplaces. They would not


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use Marx’s language to describe their reality, but they recognize thespiritual and creative diminution signified by the relentless devotionto the bottom line of corporate profits.

One way to bring students to consider a critique of capitalismis through Fromm’s analysis of alienation. As I argued in ChapterSix, Fromm is the critical theorist who had the greatest successintroducing a Marxist-inclined analysis of American life to main-stream America itself. His outlines of the social character of capi-talism with its stress on punctuality, orderliness, and pulling for theteam, his analysis of the marketing orientation with its emphasison producing attractive personality packages for exchange on theopen market of relationships, and his warnings against the pull ofautomaton conformity are all couched in still recognizable vig-nettes and accessible language. As a starting point for understand-ing Marx, Fromm is far more appealing to suspicious studentsthan, say, Gramsci or Althusser. Fromm, like Marcuse and Haber-mas, is also very good on critiquing statist, totalitarian communismand pointing out the automaton conformity and alienation ram-pant in totalitarian communist regimes.

A third source of resistance lies in critical theory’s condemna-tion of the way democracy has been distorted to serve capitalism’sinterests. The radical democratic strain evident in critical theoryalso regards the realization of genuine democracy as blocked bythe simple-minded assumption that a majority vote inevitablyensures the right course of action. Assuming that a majority voteis by definition correct is based on the belief that the choices themajority make represent the free and uncoerced realization of au-thentically felt needs. Critical theory argues that in reality automa-ton conformity, one-dimensional thought, self-surveillance, andthe steering mechanisms of money and power combine to ensurethat these supposedly “authentic” majority needs merely mimicdominant ideology. The radical democratic critique holds that in“comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom,” to useMarcuse’s (1964, p. 1) formulation, majority choices are by defin-ition manipulated and compromised-uncritical expressions ofneeds that capitalism and bureaucratic rationality have created.Contemporary democracy is thus seen as representing the auto-matic tyranny of the majority, rather than an inclusive, open-endedconversation.


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To hear democracy critiqued this way is very tough for a lot ofstudents. They can live with a critique of capitalism, but democ-racy? How can that be bad? Even some who are relatively comfort-able with reading critical theory become very alarmed whendemocracy is called into question. This makes the idea of democ-racy a fine example of a premature ultimate; that is, a term that isheld in such reverence that its invocation effectively ends any fur-ther debate or critical analysis. Adult educators can get away withpedagogic murder if they justify their practice by saying they’restriving to act democratically.

One response to the resistance to any critique of the majorityvote model of democracy is to remind students that critical theoryand democracy are not at odds. There is a radical democratic strandin critical theory that sees genuine participatory democracy as aviable political system but believes that hegemony has co-opted anddistorted this idea to reproduce the current unequal system. Thisstrand is evident particularly in the work of Fromm, Marcuse (whosays that the fact that democracy has never existed does not meanwe give up its dream), Habermas, and West. In fact West positionsMarx himself as a radical democrat, arguing that Marx and Engelsdefine communism as a struggle for democracy. This democraticemphasis is evident, in West’s view, in the insistence by Marx that“ordinary people, workers, ought to have some control over theconditions of their existence, especially the conditions of their work-place” (West, 1999b, p. 223). To West this is “a profoundly democ-ratic idea” (p. 223) and one, therefore, that can be linked to themainstream of American ideology. Arguing that Marx is a radicaldemocrat creates some interesting cognitive dissonance for learnersused to thinking of him as the antithesis of all that is democratic.

Another useful way to open up a discussion of how democracyallows the tyranny of the majority to reproduce dominant ideologyis to ask for a vote in class on a relatively simple procedural matter.Ira Shor has described in great detail the contradictions of the“democracy as majority vote” position in books such as EmpoweringEducation (1992) and When Students Have Power (1996). But youdon’t have to experiment with democratic process in as sustaineda way as Shor does to get students to realize the tyranny of themajority in their midst. Just ask the class to vote on what time totake a break, or which of the available course texts to focus on, and


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the minority that has been outvoted will soon be complainingabout the unfair nature of majority votes.

As a teacher I have spent several years teaching in doctoral co-hort programs at the University of St. Thomas and National LouisUniversity in which the negotiation of curricular and program mat-ters was an accepted part of the program (Baptiste and Brookfield,1997). Repeatedly, students involved in this negotiation report thatthe “official” curriculum of the program (even if it includes read-ing Gramsci, Habermas, and Foucault) is a piece of cake comparedto the effort to develop democratic consensus in student gover-nance sessions. Groups that try to work with the majority votemodel soon bump up against the fact of the tyranny of the major-ity. This is particularly the case where a minority of students wishesto explore a topic that seems off center, not part of the official cur-riculum. If this is proposed, discussion quickly focuses on the costsof doing this. These are almost always expressed as not graduatingon time, annoying the faculty, or not achieving the kind of aca-demic record that will help in a job search. Against this back-ground it is easy to teach about the commodification of learningsince students realize how in their governance deliberations a con-cern for good grades and for obtaining the diploma on timequickly outweigh all other considerations. It becomes glaringlyobvious how grades and the diploma are seen as tradable com-modities on the open market.

Finally on this point one of the things teachers can stress to stu-dents new to critical theory is that theory’s central concern is withfreedom—a libertarian idea very honored in American ideology.For example, Habermas argues that “socialism and liberty are iden-tical” (Habermas, 1992a, p. 75), a sentiment many of my studentswould regard as contradictory. However, Fromm, Marcuse, andHabermas in their different ways all see socialism as “an attempt . . .to indicate the necessary conditions which would have to be inplace for emancipated life-forms to emerge” (p. 145)—to be freein other words.

Critical theory is centrally concerned with releasing people fromfalsely created needs and helping them make their own free choicesregarding how they wish to think and live. Framed this way, it is muchcloser to democratic ideals than people realize. Although in manystudents’ minds critical theory is essentially a socialistic discourse con-


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cerned only with economic arrangements, it can be broadened toprivilege freedom as much as common ownership. To North Ameri-can adult educators suspicious of Marxophobia and wary of all thingssocialistic, it is the emphasis in critical theory on claiming freedomthat stands the best chance of engaging their interest.

A fourth source of resistance to studying critical theory is itsoften impenetrable language. If you have made it through to thisfinal chapter, and not skipped too much along the way, you can-not have failed to notice this problem. Throughout the text I havetried to use as many direct quotes from the authors reviewed aspossible. This has been partly to honor their scholarship and partlyto convey as accurately as possible the essence of their thought. Youmight have spent some considerable time puzzling over the mean-ing of some of these quotes. You will almost certainly have noticedthat after including a quote from an original text I often start thenext sentence with the phrase “in other words.” This sentence thenuses my own words to explain a particularly convoluted sentenceor passage drawn directly from a critical theory text.

There are great dangers embedded in the phrase “in otherwords.” The author can use it to introduce his or her preferred read-ing of the theorist’s original meaning, sometimes distorting itbeyond recognition in the process. So you should be very suspiciouswhenever you see me use this form of words. Obviously, whenever Iuse the expression “in other words” I feel I can justify it by claimingthat I am creating access points into a complex and intimidating tra-dition. But then I would say that, wouldn’t I? In my defense I canonly point out that it is my sense that for those unused to reading inthis area, critical theory can seem like a foreign language in need oftranslation. Marcuse is one of those who recognizes how the lan-guage of critical theory can alienate potential readers and allies. Heis particularly perturbed by those who ritualistically invoke terms(proletariat, dialectics, and so on) that are “identification labels forin-groups . . . mere clichés” (Marcuse, 1972, p. 39). Mechanicallyrepeating phrases like emancipatory praxis or proletarian hegemony canmake those outside of the leftist in-group even more convinced thatreaders of critical theorists live in some kind of fantasy world.

Noam Chomsky is another on the left who is most critical of aspecialized language of leftism. He declares that “whenever I heara four-syllable word I get skeptical, because I want to make sure you


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can’t say it in monosyllables” (Chomsky, 2000, p. 229) and urgespeople to “be extremely skeptical when intellectual life constructsstructures which aren’t transparent” (p. 229). In a similar vein,hooks and Davis both argue strongly for an accessible language ofcritique. Both acknowledge the way everyday language has becomedistorted by capitalist ideology, and both are quite willing to usemany terms drawn from the critical tradition. Both also use auto-biographical reflection as a way to ground critique in contexts thatconnect to readers outside academe. Davis’ own autobiography(Davis, 1974) and hooks’ personal reflections in books such asTalking Back (1989) and Where We Stand (2000b) interweave descrip-tions of personal episodes with theoretical analyses. Many of theseepisodes have to do with the excitement of stumbling over a newway of thinking—a theoretical analysis in other words—that ex-plains something in their lives.

Both Davis and hooks believe that much of the revolutionaryenergy of critical theory has been dampened by its overly convo-luted language. How can an adult educator galvanize people’sdesire to question and then act upon their world if the languageused to do this “mystifies rather than clarifies our condition”(Christian, 1990, p. 572). This is where Gramsci’s idea of the or-ganic intellectual has a particular resonance. To be able to under-stand a complicated but powerful vocabulary of critique and to beable to render this in an intelligible and meaningful way to thoseoutside that discourse is a crucial educational role. Erich Frommworked to do this as do contemporary commentators such as IraShor (1992, 1996), Lisa Delpit (1996), Herb Kohl (1994, 2000),and Mike Rose (1990, 1999). Myles Horton’s (1990) use of stories,analogies, and metaphors was one of the best adult educationalimplementations of this, and one that avoided all jargon.

As a classroom teacher I go back and forth on the issue of howmuch I should function as a translator. When I’m working with stu-dents wholly unfamiliar with critical theory, I usually begin a classwith some introductory exposition. My assumption is that thosewho have read little or nothing in the area, and who may be resis-tant to it for the reasons outlined earlier in this chapter, need me tobuild a case early on for the relevance of this material. As I sum-marize the contours of “big” ideas like ideology, hegemony, alien-ation, or power, I try to talk about their meaning in my own life by


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giving examples. I show how dominant ideology shapes my deci-sions as a teacher, how my practice is commodified, how I engagein self-surveillance, how repressive tolerance manifests itself in myattempts to broaden the curriculum, or how automaton conformityframes my response to new practices or ideas.

I also present critical theory as grounded in three (hopefully)understandable core assumptions regarding the way the world isorganized: (1) that apparently open, Western democracies are actu-ally highly unequal societies in which economic inequity, racism,and class discrimination are empirical realities, (2) that this state ofaffairs is reproduced as seeming to be normal, natural, andinevitable (thereby heading off potential challenges to the system)through the dissemination of dominant ideology (defined as thesystem of ideas, values, beliefs, and practices accepted as common-sense truth), and (3) that critical theory attempts to understand thisstate of affairs as a prelude to changing it.

After this introductory exposition, I often ask students to spendsome time reading extracts from critical theory literature. They dothis individually and privately during classroom time. The extractsthemselves are not long—a few paragraphs here, a page or twothere—since I would prefer students to read carefully a few pivotalsections than to try and become familiar too early on with therange of broad debates and interpretations surrounding an idea.For example, if we are discussing alienation students can chooseto read a couple of pages from Marx’s alienated labor manuscript(Marx, 1961), followed by Fromm’s own discussion of that idea(Fromm, 1961). When this period of private reading is finished,students work in small groups to discuss their reactions to the read-ing. Examples of some of the questions I suggest they consider inthese groups are given below:

Ideology

After you have read (privately and individually) the materials onideology, please form into groups of four to six and discuss yourreactions to the readings. Some suggested questions:

1. What aspects of the writings on ideology were most resonantand most discrepant for you?


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2. What are elements of the dominant ideology in the UnitedStates today?

3. What hegemonic beliefs and practices have you, or those youknow, embraced?

4. To what degree is your learning at this university commodified,and to what degree have you commodified learning for othersin your own practice as an educator?

5. Do you see this university or your employing agency as an ISA?If so, how does it work?

6. How did you find the language? Congenial? Intimidating? Puz-zling? Illuminating?

Try and bring back one or two questions or issues you’d likeaddressed in the large group.

Alienation

After you have read (privately and individually) the workshopmaterials on alienation, please form into groups of four to six anddiscuss your reactions to the readings. Some suggested questions:

1. What aspects of the writing on alienation were most resonantand most discrepant for you?

2. Do you see your own labor—or other aspects of your life—ascharacterized by alienation? If so, how?

3. What pressures do you feel toward automaton conformity inyour life, your learning, or your practice of education?

4. How does the marketing orientation manifest itself in your life,learning, and practice?

5. How did you find the language? Congenial? Intimidating? Puz-zling? Illuminating?


Power

After you have read (privately and individually) the workshopmaterials on power, please form into groups of four to six and dis-cuss your reactions to the readings. Some suggested questions:


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1. What aspects of the writing on power were most resonant andmost discrepant for you?

2. What regimes of truth do you see in your learning, life, work,or educational practice?

3. In what ways do you feel under anonymous surveillance?4. How does your experience of power match or contradict Fou-

cault’s idea of power as a chain, flow, or web—both oppressiveand emancipatory simultaneously?

5. How have you managed to subvert dominant power?6. How did you find the language? Congenial? Intimidating? Puz-

zling? Illuminating?


My work as translator in the classroom is, however, fraught with con-tradictions. As I have already argued, in translating you inevitablydistort and simplify. There is also a strong hint of condescension inadopting this role. To put it bluntly, you’re in effect saying that stu-dents aren’t smart enough to understand an author’s ideas in theway he or she originally expresses them. The anger this can pro-duce was brought home to me in a class I taught at Harvard on Cri-tical Theory and the Practice of Adult Education. We had arrivedat the point in the course where we were examining the work ofHabermas. I suggested that students first read my own summary ofHabermas’ twenty or so English language texts (essentially an earlydraft of Chapters Eight and Nine in this book) before they tried toread him in the original. In the anonymous student evaluations sub-mitted for the weeks we looked at Habermas, there was strong crit-icism of the insult to adult students’ intelligence that my supposedlyhelpful suggestion represented.

One consequence for students struggling to grasp the intimi-dating vocabulary of critical theory is that of impostorship. Impos-torship is the sense that many adult learners have that they are notsmart enough to be “real” or “proper” students. They feel they lackthe mental agility of eighteen to twenty-two year olds and thatsooner or later they will say or do something so awful that their in-tellectual limitations will be revealed and they will be asked to leavethe course under a cloud of shame and humiliation. Impostorshipis just as rampant (though often better concealed) in doctoral


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courses at Harvard or Columbia as it is in a neighborhood adultliteracy center. With its complex language, critical theory is par-ticularly suited to inducing impostorship. Students feel like theywill never “get” critical theory because its discourse exists in a realmbeyond their understanding.

One way to deal with impostorship is to name it early in theterm. Teachers can do this themselves or they can invite formerstudents in their courses to visit the new class and talk about howthey felt when they first encountered the language of criticality.Invariably the former students will talk about their own sense ofimpostorship, giving examples of how excruciating this was. Whenthey do this, a collective sigh of relief is often exhaled around theroom by all those who felt they were the only ones who felt thatway. In my own case I talk frequently about my own strugglesengaging with this tradition. I talk about how much time it takesme to read its texts, how I study the same sentence over and overagain and still have no idea what it means, and how I frequentlyfeel like an idiot compared to colleagues who seem very comfort-able with Althusser, Foucault, or Marcuse. Despite having done thisfor several years, I am always surprised at what a shocking, thoughvery welcome, revelation this is for students who automaticallyassume (as I probably would in their place) that as the designatedprofessor I have got critical theory “down.” Interestingly, this admis-sion does not seem to weaken my credibility, or if it does, that per-ception is not recorded on anonymous weekly student evaluations.Instead, students seem relieved that someone who has studied thiswork for some time still feels like a novice.

The final point of resistance to critical theory is caused by theradical pessimism it induces. For some people new to the tradition,reading analyses of ideological manipulation, the infinite flexibil-ity of hegemony, the pervasiveness of automaton conformity andalienation, the invasion of the lifeworld, and so on is like being hitover the head repeatedly with a padded mallet. There seems to beno end to the unrelieved gloom, no prospect of the clouds of op-pression ever being blown away. The two worst phases for many stu-dents are when they read Foucault on the nature of surveillanceand disciplinary power and Marcuse on repressive tolerance. Thesewritings contain the same message of circumspection regardingactions that seem unequivocally hopeful or liberating. Foucault


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and Marcuse both warn against the easy and seductive assumptionthat the sincerity of a teacher’s emancipatory intent guarantees thathis or her actions will somehow be experienced as liberating. Thisis sometimes very hard for activist adult educators to hear.

Educators drawn to critical theory are often attracted by its op-positional stance. It seems to hold the promise of helping us over-come alienation, unmask power, or learn liberation. When adulteducators encounter an idea like repressive tolerance, it seems tosap their energy. On the one hand, their studies in critical theoryhave created enthusiasm for the possibility of opening up the cur-riculum to different ideas, thereby galvanizing their own students’activism and developing their critical thinking. Then they readMarcuse’s warning that broadening the curriculum often servesonly to emphasize the dominance of the existing center, and theyfeel robbed of hope. “How can we do anything,” they ask, “whenMarcuse says that opening things up really only closes them downfurther, and Foucault tells us our efforts to democratize educationwill be experienced as oppressive by those we’re seeking to help?”

There is not a lot one can say in response to such a question.But just shrugging your shoulders is not an option either. I usuallyreply by talking about the importance of using whatever energyyou have most effectively. More particularly, I focus on the impor-tance of not wasting energy obsessing fretfully over things you can’tcontrol. It seems to me that educators trying to get adults to thinkand act critically need to make students aware of the many trapsthat lie in wait for those who engage in these activities. One ofthese is working diligently to promote practices that you feel areunequivocally positive without realizing their potentially negativeconsequences. To act believing you’re changing the world for thebetter, and then to find out that the converse is the case, is horri-bly demoralizing. It kills the transformative impulse and induces aprofoundly debilitating pessimism.

As a teacher I would rather know of the traps and dangers thatlie ahead, no matter how much they might complicate matters. If I am aware of the contradictions and complications of teachingcritically, then when these present themselves I am less likely to feelthat I have single-handedly caused them to appear. In her bookPractice Makes Practice, Britzman (1991) identifies the belief that“everything depends on the teacher” as one of the most enduringmyths teachers learn early on in their careers. This myth holds that


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successes are due to your brilliance and failures to your incompe-tence. We need to dispel this myth with its Copernican emphasison the teacher as the center of the universe. Given that teachingcritically is a pothole-strewn highway, we need to know that the rea-son the car is banging about in such a perilous and unpredictablemanner is because of the holes already in the blacktop, not be-cause we can’t drive.

One final thought on teaching critical theory in the face of stu-dent resistance. Something I have consistently found to be helpfulin this regard is the use of team teaching. I am talking here of teamteaching properly conducted, with all members of the team in-volved in planning and debriefing each class session, and all pres-ent throughout each class meeting. The power of team teaching isperhaps not surprising in the light of West’s and Davis’ stress on theneed for multicultural alliances in critical practice. In multiracialteams, particularly those in which women of color outnumberWhite males, the possibilities of probing how critical theory can beracialized and gendered are often enlarged. It is important to say,however, that an absence of faculty of color, or of women teachers,clearly should not mean an absence of racial or gender analysis.

One reason team teaching works well has to do with the prob-lem of translator distortion discussed earlier. When two or threefaculty are in the room together, the chances that distortions oroversimplifications of critical theorists’ ideas will go unnoticed areconsiderably reduced. Even if students notice these distortions,they may be unwilling to bring them to the class’ attention becauseof the power of the teacher. It is much easier for faculty working asa team to point out publicly to each other the potential oversimpli-fications of a particular teacher’s comments. Team teaching alsoopens up the possibility of structured devil’s advocacy with differ-ent team members taking turns to argue against the emergence ofan easy consensus on difficult classroom issues.

Final WordThere can be no conclusion to a book like this, since the traditionof critique embedded in critical theory emphasizes that this is anopen and unending project. So how to end this long and complexjourney that The Power of Critical Theory for Adult Learning and Teaching represents? Perhaps the simplest way is to reprise the


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purposes I set myself in writing this book. I wanted to respond tothe student who saw no reason to engage with critical theory andwho believed there was no way in which her practice as an adulteducator was illuminated by its concerns. Hopefully, The Power ofCritical Theory for Adult Learning and Teaching has built a convincingcase that critical theory helps explain many of the dilemmas andcontradictions of contemporary adult education practice. If so,readers will be less likely to ascribe these problematic situations totheir own incompetence or to the fickle whims of unpredictablefortune.

I wanted too, to put the critical back into critical thinking bycarefully elaborating one of the chief intellectual traditions thatinforms that discourse. I hope that this book will help relocate crit-ical thinking and critical reflection squarely in the tradition of crit-ical theory, with the explicit social and political critique, and activism,this implies. My hope is that in exploring the critical tradition I haveargued convincingly that, far from being an outdated perspective,critical theory is as relevant as ever in a world dominated by globalcapital. I hope, too, that the insights of critical theory have beenshown to have direct relevance for understanding contemporaryadult education practice and for building a critical alternative.

In doing these things I was concerned as much as possible to usethe words of the theorists themselves so that distortions and over-simplifications would be kept to a minimum. This is why the previ-ous chapters contain so many quotes drawn directly from textsauthored by the theorists themselves. At the same time, I wanted thebook to be an accessible entry point into the critical tradition thatused language and examples readers could understand. The pointwas to try and interpret critical theory’s tenets in a way that could beunderstood by those with no previous acquaintance with this work. Iwanted to clarify not mystify. Again, this is why that most suspiciousof authorial phrases—“in other words”—keeps popping up.

As readers you will judge the degree to which I have had anysuccess in realizing any of these purposes. For me, this book willhave been worth it if one, very simple, thing happens. If, after read-ing these chapters, you feel like you want to get hold of the origi-nal texts and make your own (rather than Stephen Brookfield’s)judgments about their meaning and utility for your work as anadult educator, then I will feel that The Power of Critical Theory forAdult Learning and Teaching will have had some measure of success.


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Subject Index

404

AAAACE (American Association for

Adult and Continuing Education),121, 138, 305

AAAE (Australian Association forAdult Education), 121

Abstract conceptual thought, 194–195ACACE(Advisory Council for Adult

and Continuing Education), 221Active hegemony, 113–115Adult education:Africentric paradigm

as alternative discourse in, 306–310;application of panopticon to,136–137; applying Gramscian pro-tocol for, 112–113; commodifica-tion process in, 167; ascommunitarian socialism, 158; cre-ating opportunities for privacy/iso-lation in, 199–200; Davis’ writingson liberatory power of, 341–342;democratic ideal embraced by,60–64; development of specializeddiscourse in, 186–187; feministattempts to fight patriarchythrough, 322; Foucaltian perspec-tive on power in, 126–129; Frommon structuralized view of worldfunction of, 173–175; Fromm’soutline of political literacy projectfor, 168–169; Fromm’s promotionand belief in, 153–154; Gramsci’sworker activism analysis and, 108;as ideological state apparatus,85–87; influence of Habermas onNorth American, 273–274; learn-ing about democracy as core ofresidential, 270–273; learning to

defend lifeworld as project of, 223;lessons from Davis’ analysis of col-lective struggle for, 344–351; life-world discourse of, 56–59;Newman’s case for active hege-mony in, 113–115; Newman’s criti-cism of liberal-humanist hegemonyin, 113; as practice of liberating tol-erance, 210–218; race compositionin classrooms of, 278–279

Adult Education: Evolution and Achieve-ments in a Developing Field of Study(Peters, Jarvis, and Associates),278

Adult Education Research Confer-ence (AERC), 17, 236, 278

Adult educators:”A Critical Theory ofAdult Learning and Education”(Mezirow) influence on, 221–222;Baptiste’s argument for ethicalpedagogy of coercion in, 115–116;the circle and, 130–131; exercise ofpower by, 332–333; faith in convic-tions and practices of, 180–181;Fromm on character of teachers,178; Fromm’s warning againstmajority vote used by, 169–170;impostership myth exposed by,372–373; as organic intellectuals,108–112; power and resistance androle of, 139–144; practice of lovingadult pedagogy by, 179; repressivetolerance encountered by, 374;teaching critically, 352–376

Adult learning:avenues of democra-tic, 270–273; as communicativeaction, 253–257; as democratic

bsindex.qxd 15/03/2005 8:35 PM Page 404

participation, 175–177; developingcurriculum for revolutionary,349–351; exploring overcomingalienation to promote, 53; Fou-cault’s work applied to, 144–147;Habermas on centrality of,248–249; Habermas on social evo-lution and reflexive/nonreflexive,249–253; ideology critique and,80–87; implications of Davis’ trans-formative struggle for, 344–351;impostorship and, 372–373; moralconsciousness development and,257–261, 272; relevance of criticaltheory for, 30–38; unmaskingpower to understand the processof, 47–49 see also Learning

Adult learning discussion groups:onalienation, 36; on ideology,370–371; on power, 371–372

Advisory Council for Adult and Con-tinuing Education (ACACE), 221

AERC (Adult Education ResearchConference), 17, 236, 307

The Aesthetic Dimension (Marcuse), 54African-American Philosophers (Yancy),

285African American philosophy:on

African American lifeworld,290–293; Black intellectuals con-tributing to, 297–300; connectingcritical theory to, 285–288

African Americans:Davis on healthissues of female, 341; formsexpressing historic struggle of,292–293; importance of terminol-ogy related to, 283–285; the life-world of, 290–293; racial/classoppression of, 277–278; racializedcriticality and scholarship by,280–282; racialized criticality fromperspective of, 275–279

African Ameripean, 284African Diaspora, 289African socialism, 285Africentrism, 276–277Africology school, 288

The Afrocentric Idea (Asante), 276, 277AIDS epidemic crisis, 251‘Alienated Labour’ (Marx), 154, 155Alienation:combating racist, 288–290;

as explored by White males, 277;feminist critique of Marx’s empha-sis on labour and, 317–318;Fromm on capitalism and,162–165; Fromm’s proposedsocialism as counter to, 157–159;Marxism’s influence on Fromm’swork on, 156–157; racial and class,278, 289; student discussion on,371 see also Overcoming alienation

American Association for Adult andContinuing Education (AAACE),121, 138, 305

The American Evasion of Philosophy(West), 298

American Marxist socialists, 21American pragmatism see PragmatismAnalytic philosophy and logic tradi-

tion, 14–15Andragogy, 284Antigonish movement, 48Art as revolutionary, 201–206The Art of Loving (Fromm), 149, 153,

178Ascending analysis technique, 145Australian Association for Adult Edu-

cation (AAAE), 121Automaton conformity, 170–175Autonomous thought, 196, 215–216Autonomy and Solidarity (Habermas

interview), 259

BBelief system:Habermas on moral

point of view and, 259; hegemonyprocess embracing, 43, 94, 95–97,99; ideology critique and ques-tioning of, 83–84; ideology sup-ported by, 66–68; regarding power,118–123; technocracy, 246

Berlin Wall, fall of, 21Between Facts and Norms (Habermas),

233, 241, 268

SUBJECT INDEX 405


Beyond the Chains of Illusion (Fromm),151

Black intellectuals, 297–300Black Nationalism, 291Black Panther movement, 182, 183,

337Black Power movement, 277Black theology, 297, 303“Boat for Vietnam” committee, 144Bolshevik Revolution (1917), 22Bureaucratic rationality ideology,

70–71

CCanadian Citizens and Farm Forums,

270Capitalism:alienating character of,

162–165; commitment to profes-sional goals independent from, 91;Davis on sexism/racism and,338–341; educational institutions as analogs of, 75; feminism ex-ploration of oppression in, 317,336–337; Foucault on, 124;Fromm’s perspective of, 153,154–155, 160–165, 178–179; Haber-mas on democratic way of lifeinhibited by, 231; ideological stan-dardization of, 162; ideology of, 70,72–73; incompatibility of love and,178–179; Marx’s description ofdevelopment of, 154; partnershipbetween patriarchy and, 316; resis-tance to critical theory ‘s critiqueof, 364–365; sexual division oflabour and, 318–319; social charac-ter of, 160–162

“Catalyst groups,” 210Censorship, 216–218Center for Educational Outreach and

Innovation, 361Center for the Study of Liberal Edu-

cation for Adults (Mills), 174Challenging hegemony, learning to

recognize, 105–108

Challenging ideology:adult learningand, 80–87; of capitalism andbureaucratic rationality, 69–73; ascritical theory task, 40–42; of ideo-logical state apparatuses, 73–75; byresisting ideology, 75–80 see alsoIdeology

Christianity, 295The circle, 130–131Citizens:Habermas on democratic

process and expectations of,269–270; learning democracy by,270

Civil privatism, 234–235Civil society:examining threat to,

220–221, 235–238; Habermas defi-nition of, 236–237; hegemonyprocess in, 98; marginalized group-ings within, 237; reason used torebuild, 230; requirements for pre-serving democratic process of, 223

Class:hooks’ analysis of racism, sexismand, 330–331; interconnectionsbetween race and, 277–278;underplayed by feminist scholars,314

Clinton-Lewinski scandal, 82Clydeside Shipbuilding sit-in (Scot-

land), 12Cohort learning programs, 55Colledge for Sale (Shumar), 20Commission of Professors of Adult

Education (CPAE), 236Commodification, 20, 156, 157, 167Commodity exchange economy,

24–25Commodity fetishism:Fromm’s exten-

sion of, 166–168; Marx’s conceptof, 165–166

Communication:democratic norms aspart of, 262; Habermas on adultlearning as integral to, 248–249;public sphere and levels of,232–233; reflexive learning and,250 see also Language

406 SUBJECT INDEX


Communication and the Evolution of Society (Habermas), 224, 262, 270

Communicative actions:adult learn-ing as, 253–257; critical reflectionas, 272–273; Habermas definitionof, 254–255, 256; Habermas the-ory of, 241–242, 253–257,261–266; lifeworld renewal andrecreation through, 241–242; post-modernism view of, 256–257; rais-ing validity claims as part of,255–257; social functions satisfiedby, 253; validity claims and,255–257, 262–266 see also Dis-course; The Theory of CommunicativeAction (Habermas)

The Communist Manifesto, 151, 339Communitarian (or humanistic)

socialism, 157–159, 162Compulsory visibility principle, 135Concept of Man (Marx), 14Conceptual learning, 208–209Conceptual thought, 194–195Conscience development, 172–173Consciousness development, 210Consequential validity, 25–26Constructivism, 15Contesting hegemony task, 43–46The Cornel West Reader (West), 79CPAE (Commission of Professors of

Adult Education), 236Creativity:revolutionary potential of

art, 201–206; social changethrough, 197–198

Il Credo del Populo (Gramsci), 33Critical consciousness:adult educa-

tion work regarding, 108–112;learning process for, 104–108

Critical learning:examples of, 11–12;teaching for, 353–376

Critical pedagogy:defining, 322; fem-inist concerns with, 316, 322; fem-inist deconstruction of, 322–328

Critical pragmatism, 360Critical reflection, 272–273Critical Social Science (Fay), 34, 35

Critical theory:applied to adult learn-ing, 7–8; bridge between culturalstudies and, 219; critical posturetowards, 32–38; as Eurocentric,275; as exercise of male privilege,314–317; five distinctive charac-teristics of, 23–29; of Foucault,123–126; human conduct asviewed by, 51; ideology critique tra-dition of, 13, 42; Marcuse’s workchallenging, 218–219; Marxismand, 18–23; meaning of criticalityin, 10–12; overcoming resistanceto, 361–375; relevance for adultlearning, 30–38; “single existentialjudgement” heart of, 23, 27–28;social order explanation by, 7;teaching critically using, 352–376see also Frankfurt School of CriticalSocial Theory; Gendering critical-ity; Habermas critical theories;Racialized criticality; Theory

Critical Theory, Marxism, and Modernity(Kellner), 34

Critical Theory and Adult Learningworkshops (Center for Educa-tional Outreach and Innovation),361

Critical Theory and the Practice ofAdult Education (Harvard Uni-versity), 361, 372

Critical Theory Learning Tasks:chal-lenging ideology, 40–42; contestinghegemony, 43–46; learning libera-tion, 53–55; overcoming alienation,49–53; practising democracy,60–65; reclaiming reason, 55–60;unmasking power, 46–49

A Critical Theory of Adult Learning andEducation (Mezirow), 221

Critical thinking:adult education for,206–210; automaton conformity assuppressing, 173; Gramsci’s viewof, 109–110; importance of indi-vidual isolation to learning and,184–185; motivation for, 12

SUBJECT INDEX 407


Criticality:critical theory meaning of,10–12; four traditions of, 12–18

A Critique of the Commodification ofHigher Education (Shumar), 20

Cuban Missile Crisis, 159Cultural reproduction, 242–243

DDas Kapital (Marx), 156“Day Against Capitalism” demonstra-

tions (London), 79Defining the Enemy (Newman), 113Deliberate Democracy:Habermas’ dis-

course theory of democracy and,266–273; Habermas on learning tocreate moral/just, 224; Habermastheories applied to idea of, 246

Democracy:alienated politics in prac-tice of, 168–169; censorship in,216–218; critical theory and taskof practising, 60–64; Fromm’sviewpoint on, 152; Habermas’ dis-course theory on, 266–273; inves-tigation of Frankfurt School of, 60;reaching agreement as part of,262; resistance to critical theory’scondemnation of, 365–367; Weston individuality under, 302

“Democratic Discussion and the Peo-ple’s Voice” (Lindemann), 271

Democratic majority principle, 72–73Democratic society, 230–231The Democratic Way of Life (Smith and

Lindeman), 271Dialectic of Enlightenment (Horkheimer

and Adorno), 69, 70, 76, 220,226–227, 228, 295

Disciplinary power, 121–122, 132–134Discourse:adult education specialized,

186–187; critique of Foucault’sanalysis of knowledge and, 321;Habermas’ discourse theory ofdemocracy, 266–273; Habermas onconditions needed for free/equal,222; hegemony as specialized, 187;

lifeworld, 56–59 see also Commu-nicative actions; Language

Discourse theory of democracy,266–273

Discovering Radical Contingency (Bag-nall), 64

Discussion as a Way of Teaching (Brook-field and Preskill), 256

Distance, 198Donahue (TV show), 77Dusk of Dawn (Dubois), 277Dynamic of exchange, 24–25

EEclipse of Reason (Horkheimer), 16,

54, 69, 70, 76, 226Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts

(Marx), 154Education and Philosophic Manuscripts

(Marcuse), 19Emancipatory pedagogy, 327Empowering Education (Shaw), 366Empowerment, 71, 326Enlightenment:freedom ideal of,

50–51; ideology critique springingfrom, 42; racialized rationality of,282

Enlightenment thought, 18Escape from Freedom (Fromm), 51, 52,

157, 162, 170, 171An Essay on Liberation (Marcuse), 54Ethic of care, 313The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist

Thought (West), 294Ethnic solepsism, 343Ethnicity, 281 see also RaceEvolutionary learning, 251Exchange dynamics, 24–25Existentialism, 51Experimental learning, 128–129, 208

FFaith, 180–181False needs, 189–195, 205, 229, 367Falsifiability principal, 34

408 SUBJECT INDEX


Families:feminist empirical analysesof, 320; politic of dominationlearned through, 319

Feminism:concerns over control offeminine discourse, 319; concernswith critical pedagogy by, 316, 322;critique of Marxism by, 317–319;critiquing Habermas and Fou-cault, 319–322; Davis’ theory oftransformative struggle and,336–351; deconstructing criticalpedagogy, 322–328; definitions of,331, 338, 344; hooks on transgres-sive pedagogy of, 328–336; impactof feminist theory on, 335–336;popular cultural art for conscious-ness raising, 348–351; role of lan-guage in, 335–336 see alsoGendering criticality; Women

Feminism is for Everybody (hooks), 334Feminist Theory (hooks), 330Frankfurt Institute of Social Research

(Germany), 22–23, 69, 223Frankfurt School of Critical Social

Theory:attempts to disassociateMarxist analysis from, 19; develop-ment of pessimism regarding rev-olutionary change in, 36–37;Eagleton on ideology as viewed in,76–77; Foucault’s commentsregarding, 123; four traditions ofcriticality and, 12–13; Habermasview of the, 223, 225; ideology cri-tique and psychoanalysis branchesof, 23; influence of, 8; Institute ofSocial Research development of,22–23, 69; investigation of democ-racy by, 60; male orientation offirst generation, 312; Marxisminfluence on, 21–22; spirit of self-critical enquiry hallmark of, 36 seealso Critical Theory

Freedom:democratic limitations of,64; Enlightenment ideal of, 50–51;existentialists on, 51; Habermas’view of personal, 226, 229–230;

Marcuse on emancipating thesenses for, 200

Freire Center (Minneapolis), 46Freireian culture circles, 199

GGendering criticality:critiquing

Habermas and Foucault, 319–322;Davis’ theory of transformationstruggle and, 336–351; decon-structing critical pedagogy,322–328; different forms of,312–313; feminism as transgressivepedagogy, 328–336; Marxism and,317–319; responding to criticaltheory as exercise of male privi-lege, 314–317 see also Critical the-ory; Feminism

The German ideology (Marx andEngels), 41, 68, 73, 95, 149, 362

German Workers Education Associa-tion, 21

Global warming crisis, 251, 252Green Party, 46“Group Work and Democracy” (Lin-

deman), 271

HHabermas critical theories:of com-

municative action, 241–242,253–257, 261–266; on decline ofthe public sphere, 230–235; dis-course theory of democracy,266–273; implications of, 244–247;influence on North Americanadult education by, 273–274; oninvasion of the lifeworld, 238–247;positioning of, 223–230; on threatto civil society, 235–238 see alsoCritical theory

Happy to be Nappy (hooks), 336Hegemony:consent element of, 95;

contesting, 43–46; defining, 43,94, 95–97, 99; description ofprocess of, 97–104; Gramsci’s con-cept of, 93; modern relevance of,

SUBJECT INDEX 409


44–45; Newman’s case for active,113–115; Newman’s criticism ofadult education’s liberal-humanist,113; of repressive tolerance, 213;as specialized discourse, 187;tenacity and adaptability of, 44;transformed into ideology, 95

Hegemony process:blanket nature of,103–104; in civil society, 98; every-day experiencing of, 97–98; TheMatrix (film) portrayal of, 99;metaphor of vocation applied to,99–103; role of mass media in, 97,98

Highlander Folk School (Tennessee),15–16, 48, 82, 199, 306, 332

Highlander Research Center (Ten-nessee), 36, 46, 273

Hippie movement, 182, 183Holocaust, 165, 309Humanistic (or communitarian)

socialism, 157–159, 162

IIdeological state apparatuses

(ISA’s):adult education as, 85–87;described, 73–75; function of, 120See also Ideology

Ideology:beliefs supporting, 66–68;capitalism and bureaucratic ratio-nality, 69–73; capitalism’s standard-ization of, 162; as central criticaltheory concept, 68–69; combatingracist alienation and, 289–290; con-nections between lifeworld and, 57;critical pedagogy work regarding,316, 322–328; feminism as struggleagainst dominant, 331–336; hege-mony transformed into, 95; learn-ing, 87–93; “mustn’t grumble,” 69;as permeating all interpersonalcommunications, 55; of pluralism,90–91; resisting, 75–80; self-directed learning as deliberatebreak from dominant, 106; studentdiscussion on, 370–371; systemic

critical, 13 See also Challenging ide-ology; Ideological state apparatuses

“Ideology and Ideological State Appa-ratuses” (Althussar), 73

Ideology critique:adulthood as pre-condition for, 80–82; critical the-ory tradition of, 13, 42; Habermason benefits of, 229; ideological for-mation of self-directed learningand, 83–85

Ideology (Eagleton), 34Imani (faith), 308Impostership, 372–373In Defense of the Lifeworld (Welton), 59Individual isolation, 184–185Individuality, 302Institute of Proletarian Culture, 96Institute of Social Research (Ger-

many), 22–23, 69Instrumental reasoning, 69, 71–72ISA’s See Ideological state apparatusesItalian Communist Party, 96Italian Socialist Party, 96

JJournal of Negro Education, 306“Judges of normality,” 146, 147Justifications and Applications (Haber-

mas interview), 267

KKawaida (American racism), 288Kawaida in Philosophy Born of Struggle

(Harris), 288Keeping Faith (West), 298, 300“Kneejerk marxophobia,” 19Knowledge:critique of Foucault’s

analysis of discourse and, 321;power, truth and, 137–139 see alsoLearning

Knowledge and Human Interests (Haber-mas), 258

Kuchichagulia (self-determination),308

Kuumba (creativity), 308Kyoto Accord, 251

410 SUBJECT INDEX


LLabor:capitalism and sexual division

of, 318–319; feminist critique ofMarx’s emphasis on alienationand, 317–318; feminist debateover alienation and domestic, 318;Fromm on capitalism and,154–155; product as objectifica-tion of, 155–156 See also Workers

Language:alienating nature of socialistfeminist, 319; art as producing newforms of, 202–203; blinding peopleto establishment, 186; censorshipof, 216–218; conceptual learningand development of new, 208–209;feminism and, 335–336; logocen-trism assumption regarding speechand, 256–257; as medium of domi-nation and power, 267; one-dimen-sional thought and role of,192–193; oppositional movementsuse of, 209; Orwell’s analysis ofopposite use of, 213–214; as ravagedby consumer society, 193 See alsoCommunication; Discourse; Speech

Learning:accreditation of adults’ prior,128; conceptual, 208–209; criticalconsciousness, 104–108; critical the-ory and centrality of, 30–32; evolu-tionary, 251; experiential, 128–129,208; Fromm’s analysis of workplace,159; Gramsci’s Marxism on sociallyconstructed nature of, 105; Haber-mas on Marx’s mistake about pur-pose of, 224–225; ideologicalformation of self-directed, 83–85;ideology, 87–93; importance ofindividual isolation to, 184–185;Mezirow’s theory of transformative,222–223; objectification of, 156; torecognize and challenge hege-mony, 105–108; sense of indepen-dence/separateness as part of, 107;social evolution and reflexive/non-reflexive, 249–253 See also Adultlearning; Knowledge

Learning Capitalist Culture (Foley), 88Learning journals, 146Learning liberation:adult education

for critical thinking and, 206–210;as critical theory task, 53–55; edu-cation as practice of liberating tol-erance and, 210–218; Marcuse’scritique of Marx, 185–188; one-dimensional thought and,189–195; pathways to, 195–206

Learning to Labor (Willis), 88Legitimation Crisis (Habermas), 234,

249Lenin and Philosophy (Fromm), 149“The Leninist/Capitalist Intelli-

gentsia” (Chomsky), 363Liberalism, 226Liberation pathways:Marcuse’s explo-

ration of, 195–196; revolutionarypotential of art as, 201–206; revo-lutionary significance of distanceand privacy to, 196–201

Liberation School (Student Non-Vio-lent Co-ordinating Committee),342

Liberation (socialist newspaper), 144Lies My Teacher Told Me (Leon), 35Lifeworld:adult education for learn-

ing to defend, 223; the AfricanAmerican, 290–293; defining, 221,239–240; enclosing totality that is,240–241; Foucault pursuit of howpower invades the, 126; functionsof symbolic reproduction of,242–243; Habermas on invasion ofthe, 238–247; points of entry intoexamining, 243–244; renewed andrecreated through communicativeaction, 221–242

Lifeworld discourse, 56–59Lindeman Center (Chicago), 46Logocentrism, 256–257Love:exchange in relationships of,

163–164; Fromm on adult peda-gogy and radical, 178–179; incom-patibility of capitalism and, 178–179

SUBJECT INDEX 411


MMailer’s Regard (Newman), 113“Making Critical Thinking Critical”

(kincheloe), 12Man for Himself (Fromm), 157The Man from Hope (video), 83Market:decline of civil society and

impact on, 238; as metaphor oflife, 164–165

Marxism:alienation concept of,49–50; attempts to dissociateFrankfurt School from analysisused by, 19; combating racist alien-ation using terms of, 289–290; crit-ical theory use of, 18–23; feministcritique of, 317–319; Habermas’reconstruction of, 223–225; influ-ence on Davis’ transformativestruggle analysis, 339–340; investi-gation of democracy ideal by, 60;linked in American imagination tototalitarianism, 296; Marcuse’s cri-tique of, 185–188; as “philosophyof praxis,” 96; racialising criticalityand influence of, 276; socially con-structed nature of learning inGramsci’s, 105; West’s blending ofBlack theology with, 297

The Marxists (Mills), 34Marxophobia, 19, 362Marx’s Concept of Man (Fromm), 154,

362Mass media and hegemony process,

97, 98Maternal response, 313Maternal Thinking (Ruddick), 313The Matrix (film), 99The Meaning of Adult Education (Lin-

deman), 62, 271Measured coercion pedagogy,

115–116Memory, 197–198Modernist epistemology, 6–7“Monological Self,” 51Moral Consciousness and Communicative

Action (Habermas), 258, 270

Moral consciousness development,257–261, 272

Moral universalism, 259–261Motherwork, 313“Mustn’t grumble” ideology, 69

NNAFTA (North American Free Trade

Agreement), 21National Association of Colored

Women’s Clubs, 342National Institute for Adult Continu-

ing Education (UK), 121National Louis University (Chicago),

9, 177, 361, 367Nazi Germany, 22, 218, 309The New Conservatism (Habermas),

241The New Order (Marxist magazine), 96NGO (non-governmental organiza-

tion), 237Nguzo Saba (Swahili values), 277, 285,

288, 308, 309Nia (purpose), 308Non-governmental organization

(NGO), 237Nonreflexive adult learning, 249–253North American Free Trade Agree-

ment (NAFTA), 21

OObjectification, 155–156Objectivity, 179–180On Liberty (Mill), 64On the Pragmatics of Communication

(Habermas), 233–234One Dimensional Man (Marcuse), 54,

189, 195, 355One-dimensional thought, 189–195Oppression:African Americans and

racial/class, 277–278; feminism asstruggle to eradicate, 331–336;feminism exploration of capital-ism and, 317, 336–337; feministcritique of critical pedagogy,326–327; silence regarding, 328

412 SUBJECT INDEX


Organic intellectuals, 18, 108–112,298–299

Overcoming alienation:critical theorytask of, 49–53; Fromm’s proposedversion of socialism as, 157–159 Seealso Alienation

PPanopticon, 136–137Patriarchy:family as primary site for

learning, 319; feminist attemptsusing education to fight, 322

“Peace is a Sister’s Issue Too” (Davis),341

Pedagogy:defining critical, 322;Ellsworth’s attempts at emancipa-tory, 327; feminist concerns withcritical, 316–322; feminist decon-struction of critical, 322–328;hooks on feminism as transgres-sive, 328–336; of measured coer-cion, 115–116

Pedagogy of Hope (Freier), 7The Peoples Cry (Marxist magazine), 96A Peoples History of the United States

(Zinn), 79The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity

(Habermas), 241Philosophy Born of Struggle (Harris),

275“The Place of Discussion in the

Learning Process” (Lindeman),271

Pluralism ideology, 90–91Political consciousness, 203Political power, of art, 201–206Postmetaphysical Thinking (Habermas),

227Postmodernism:communicative

actions as against, 256–257; con-tingency element of, 64; decon-struction of self in, 149; humanconduct as viewed by, 51; pragma-tism roots of, 64–65

The Postnational Constellation (Haber-mas), 234, 266

Power:art as political, 201–206; cen-trality to human relations,126–129; democracy and relation-ships of, 61–62; Foucault onnature of, 125, 129–131; ideologycritique on unmasking relation-ships of, 229; illusions and beliefsregarding, 118–123; knowledge,truth and, 137–139; language asmedium of domination and, 267;learning critical consciousnessabout, 104–108; power/load/mar-gin formula defining, 48–49;replacement of sovereign powerby disciplinary, 121–122, 132–134;role of adult education regardingresistance and, 139–144; studentdiscussion on, 371–372; synapticeconomy of, 129–131; teacher andexercise of, 332–333 See alsoUnmasking power

Power/Knowledge (Foucault interview),124

Practice Makes Practice (Britzman), 374Practicing democracy task, 60–64Pragmatism:continuous experimen-

tation emphasized in, 15–16; criti-cal, 360; deployed in service ofsocial justice, 34–35; Habermas’engagement of, 225; prophetic,17–18, 302–306; relationship tocriticality by, 16–17; as requiringdemocracy, 15–16; as roots of post-modernism, 64–65; West’s infusingof criticality and, 295, 301–306

Pragmatist constructivism, 15–17Pravda (Soviet newspaper), 182Prison Information Group, 144Privacy, 198–200Privatism, 234–235Prophecy Deliverance (West), 294, 297Prophetic pragmatism, 17–18,

302–306Prospero (The Tempest), 204–205Public opinion:defining, 233; politi-

cal will-formation and, 232–233

SUBJECT INDEX 413


Public sphere:consequences ofdecline of, 234–235; examiningdecline of, 220; Habermas on lossof reason and collapse of,231–232; political will-formationin, 232–233; reason used torebuild, 230

RRace:adult classrooms and composi-

tion of, 278–279; Africentric ori-entation of critical theory on, 310;Davis on building coalitions acrossgender and, 343; interconnectionsbetween class and, 277–278, 289;underplayed by feminist scholars,314 See also Ethnicity

Race Matters (West), 296Racial alienation:combating,

288–290; connection betweenclass and, 278; resisting dominantideology and, 289–290

Racial politics, 343Racialism, 281–282Racialized criticality:African American

lifeworld and, 290–293; AfricanAmerican scholarship contribu-tions to, 280–282; as alternative dis-course, 306–310; by connectingcritical theory to African Americanphilosophy, 285–288; importanceof terminology as part of, 283–285;Nguzo Saba (Swahili values) ele-ment of, 277, 285, 288, 308, 309;reinterpreting critical theory as,275–279; West’s analysis of racismusing, 295–301; West’s infusing ofpragmatism into, 295, 301–306 Seealso Critical theory

Raciation concept, 281Racism:African Americans’ response

to, 292–293; conducting a geneal-ogy of, 300–301; Davis’ focus oncapitalism and, 338–341; hooks’analysis of class, sexism and,330–331; Kawaida articulating

American, 288; racialism com-pared to, 281–282; West’s pro-posed analysis of, 297–298

Realizing humanity image, 28Reason:Habermas on public sphere

collapse and loss of, 231–232;Habermas understanding of, 227,228, 229, 230; instrumental, 69,71–72; reclaiming, 55–60

“Rebellious subjectivity,” 54Reclaiming reason, 55–60Reflexive adult learning, 250–252,

257Relationships:centrality of power to

human, 126–129; communicativeaction as part of social, 253; Frommon exchange within love, 163–164;lifeworld reproduction and pat-terns of social, 243 See also Society

Renault factory occupation (Paris1968), 12

Repressive tolerance, 60, 212–215,374

Resistance:Cale’s study on dominantideology resulting from, 170; rela-tionship between power and,139–144; teaching critically andovercoming, 361–375

Restoring Hope (West and Sealey), 300Revolutionary learning, 349–351Ruskin College, 48

SThe Sane Society (Fromm), 153, 157,

159, 160, 172Seeing Red (documentary), 77Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 149Self:Fromm on the nature of,

149–150; postmodernism’s decon-struction of, 149; self-directionconcept of, 84–85

Self-directed learning:autonomouslearning theme of, 196; as deliber-ate break from dominant ideology,106; ideological formation of,83–85

414 SUBJECT INDEX


Self-surveillance, 134September 11 (2001), 220Sexism:benefits of fighting, 334–335;

Davis’ focus on capitalism and,338–341; hooks’ analysis of class,racism and, 330–331

Silence, 328Sketches of my Culture (West CD), 298,

336Social action, 15Social evolution:development of

moral consciousness and,257–261, 272; reflexive adultlearning as lever of, 250–252, 257

Social integration, 242, 243Socialism:communitarian or human-

istic, 157–159; distinguishing com-munitarian from state, 159;Fromm on goal of, 175; Habermason freedom as applied to, 226;Marx’s version of, 157–158; Uja-maa underpinning African, 285

Socialization, 242–243Society:creativity as liberating,

197–198; examination of threecrises faced by Western, 220–221;functions of lifeworld reproduc-tion for, 242–243; Habermas’ def-inition of democratic, 230–231;Habermas’ hypothesis on futureof, 246–247; Habermas on possi-bility of universalism in, 259–261;Habermas on purpose of theoriz-ing about, 224; implications ofHabermas’ theories on, 244–247;language as ravaged by consumer,193; Marcuse on dangers of tech-nology to, 189; Marcuse on one-dimensional thought/false needsand, 189–195, 205, 229, 367; Mar-cuse on pathways to liberation of,195–206 See also Relationships

The Sociological Imagination (Mills),174, 355

Soledad Brothers, 337

Speech:censorship of, 216–218; desirefor mutual understanding as cen-tral to, 261–262; Habermas onideal rules of discourse embeddedin, 267–268; learning to assessvalidity of, 262–264; logocentrismassumptions regarding, 256–257;silence vs., 328 See also Language

Speech community, 265–266The Structural Transformation of the Pub-

lic Sphere (Habermas), 232, 234Student Non-violent Co-ordinating

Committee, 342Surveillance:learning journals as

instruments of, 146; unmaskingpower and the panopticon and,134–137

Synaptic economy of power, 129–131Systemic critical ideology, 13

TTalking Back (hooks), 328, 329, 331,

369Teachers College (Columbia Univer-

sity), 361Teachers College (New York), 221Teaching critically:final thoughts on,

375–376; methodologicalapproaches to, 355–360; overcom-ing resistance, 361–375; the prac-tice of, 353–356; reflections onteaching critical theory and,360–361 See also Adult educators

Teaching to Transgress (hooks), 4, 331,333

Teaching What You’re Not (Mayberry),280

Technocracy, 246Technology:Habermas on frightening

domination by, 246; Marcuse ondangers of, 189–195

The Tempest (Shakespeare), 204–205Theoretical Foundations of Critical

Pedagogy (University of StThomas course), 43

SUBJECT INDEX 415


Theory:defining, 2–4; Monty Pyhon’sparodies of, 1; utility of, 4–10 Seealso Critical Theory

Theory and Practice (Habermas), 245,262, 266

The Theory of Communicative Action(Habermas), 239, 240–241, 254 Seealso Communicative actions

To Have or To Be (Fromm), 150, 151Tolerance:education as practice of

liberating, 210–218; repressive, 60,212–215, 374

Toward a Rational Society (Habermas),268

“Traditional and Critical Theory”(Horkheimer), 23

Transformative cases, 71Transformative learning theory, 14,

222–223Transformative struggle theory,

336–351Transgressive pedagogy, 328–336Truth:Foucault’s description of,

138–139; power, knowledge and,137–139

Turin factory council movement(1920’s), 12, 21, 94, 96, 112

UUjamaa (co-operative economics),

285–308Ujima (collective work and responsi-

bility), 308Umoja (unity), 308University of St Thomas, 43, 367Unmasking power:centrality of power

to human relations and, 126–129;as critical theory task, 46–49; disci-plinary power concept and,132–134; Foucault as critical theo-rist and, 123–126; surveillance andthe panopticon in, 134–137;synaptic economy of power and,129–131 See also Power

VValidity claims:as intrinsic to human

conversation, 255–257, 264–266;learning to assess speech, 262–264

Vietnamese boat people, 144Vocation-hegemony metaphor,

99–103

WA Way of Being (Rogers), 14When Students Have Power (Shor), 366Where We Stand (hooks), 369White supremacy, 333–334Why Read Marx Today? (Wolff), 21Women:Davis on health issues of

Black, 341; Davis’ scepticismregarding shared unity of, 344;feminism exploration of capital-ism and oppression of, 317,336–337; popular cultural art forraising consciousness of, 348, 351See also Feminism

Women, culture and politics (Davis), 341Women’s Ways of Knowing (Belenky,

Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule),313, 324

Workers:Fromm on alienation ofmodern, 165–166; social characterof capitalism and impact on,160–162 See also Labor

Working People’s College, 21Workplace democratic transforma-

tion, 12World Trade Organization (WTO),

79, 237World Wide Web, 142

ZZimbabwe skilled labor development,

20

416 SUBJECT INDEX


Name Index

399

AAdorno, T.W., 12, 21, 22, 23, 36, 56,

69, 70, 75, 83, 87, 125, 220, 223,227, 337

Alcoff, L., 312Allman, P., 18Allport, G., 152Althusser, L., 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 83,

85, 87, 98, 120, 373Appiah, K.A., 286Apthekar, B., 338Arendt, H., 51, 52Argyris, C., 11Aronowitz, S., 16, 88Asante, M.K., 276, 283, 288, 290Avila, E.B., 9, 177, 310

BBagnall, R.G., 6, 29, 64, 150Baptiste, I., 64, 115–16, 177, 354Basseches, M., 81, 93Baudrillard, J., 52, 172Belenky, M.F., 84–85, 312, 313, 324Benhabib, S., 27Bentham, J., 135Billig, M., 91Boal, A., 187Borg, C., 195Borradori, G., 220Boshier, R., 136Boxhill, B., 278Braaten, J., 320Bridges, D., 271Britzman, D.P., 5, 374–74Brockett, R.G., 83Bronner, S.E., 33

Brookfield, S.D., 49, 64, 85, 177, 196,206, 256, 271, 305, 347, 351, 357,358, 359

Brown, A.H., 306Bryant, I., 51Buisa, A.P.A., 314Burbules, N., 271Burman, E., 85Bush, G.W., 251Buttiegieg, J., 95

CCale, G., 170Candy, P.C., 83Cherryholmes, C.H., 15Cho, S., 83Chodorow, N.J., 312, 315Chomsky, N., 43, 67, 363, 368–69Christian, B., 319, 369Clark, C., 221Clinchy, B.M., 85, 312, 313Clinton, B., 83Coben, D., 112Colin, S.A.J., 112 (Dr.”C”), 276, 278,

279, 280, 283, 284, 285, 304, 306,307, 308, 309

Collard, S., 221Collini, S., 28Collins, M., 11, 83, 118, 179, 181,

220Collins, P.H., 314, 357Collins, R., 49, 196Crenshaw, K., 286Croissant, K., 144Cruse, H., 287

bnindex.qxd 15/03/2005 8:35 PM Page 399

DDarder, A., 324Davis, A.Y., 19, 116, 142, 183, 211,

282, 287, 314, 316, 319, 336–51,355, 363, 369, 374

Delgado, R., 25Delpit, I., 369Derrida, J., 220Dewey, J., 15, 63, 225, 303Di Stephano, C., 314Diamond, I., 314Dippo, D., 11Du Bois, W.E.B., 277, 287, 307, 310Dutschke, R., 211

EEagleton, T., 34, 40, 67, 68, 76, 78, 91Easter, O.V., 306Edwards, D., 127, 128, 131Ehrenreich, B., 319Ehrlich, C., 317Eisenstein, Z., 318Ellsworth, E., 316, 324, 326, 327, 328,

329Engels, F., 41, 73, 95, 362Ennis, R.H., 15Entwistle, H., 112Eribon, D., 142

FFalwell, J., 19Fanon, F., 287Farmer, R., 306Fay, B., 7, 34, 35, 36Feurbach, L., 21, 353Fleming, M., 314, 320Fluss, D., 312Fo, D., 187Foley, D.E., 80, 88, 89, 90Follett, M.P., 47, 120Foucault, M., 37, 45–46, 47, 48, 119,

121, 122–29, 132–34, 135, 136,137, 138–39, 142, 143, 144–48,287, 293, 297, 298, 299, 300, 303,314, 316, 321–22, 324, 327, 354,373, 374

Fox, D., 85Frase, N., 312, 314, 320Freire, P., 9, 26, 37, 86, 89, 110–11,

112, 210, 305, 306, 317, 323, 324,329, 347

Fromm, E., 14, 19, 21, 22, 41, 50,51–52, 53, 149–70, 226, 329, 346,352, 354, 355, 357, 358, 362, 365,366, 367, 369, 370

GGarvey, M., 287, 306, 307, 308, 310Gates, B., 91Gaventa, J., 36Geuss, R., 26, 40Giddens, A., 74, 87Gilligan, C., 313, 315Gimenez, M., 318Giroux, H.A., 322, 324, 325Giscard d’Estang, V., 144Goffman, E., 74Goldberger, N.R., 85, 312, 313Gore, J.M., 131, 312, 321, 323, 324,

325, 326, 327Gorman, R., 11Gotanda, N., 286Gould, R., 14Gouthro, P.A., 314Gramsci, A., 3, 16, 17–18, 21, 33, 40,

43, 44, 45, 46, 86, 89, 93, 94, 95,96, 97, 98, 99, 104, 105, 106, 107,108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 143, 171,287, 290, 293, 298, 299, 303, 314,323, 324, 327, 335, 348, 356, 362,369

Grant, J., 312Greene, M., 60, 63Gross, B., 90Guy, T., 276, 278, 307, 308, 309Gyant, L., 305

HHabermas, J., 17, 21, 23, 25, 30, 56,

57, 58, 59, 63, 64, 65, 95, 118, 125,126, 158, 163, 182, 196, 222,223–47, 248–71, 272–73, 287, 290,

400 NAME INDEX


292, 293, 314, 316, 319–20, 322,323, 324, 337, 352, 356, 357, 358,367, 372

Haley, H., 337Hammond, M., 49, 83, 196Harris, L., 275, 277, 282, 285, 306Hart, M., 220, 313Hartmann, H., 313, 316, 317Hayes, E., 9, 278, 285, 306Hegel, G., 18, 33, 149Hennessy, R., 318Hirschman, N.J., 314Holst, J.D., 18, 111hooks, b., 4, 7, 81, 280, 282, 294, 296,

301, 314, 316, 319, 324, 328–36,343, 351, 369

Hord, F.L., 283Horkheimer, M., 7, 12, 15, 16, 21, 22,

23, 25, 26, 27, 29, 34, 36, 37, 56,69, 70, 71, 72, 75, 76, 83, 87, 89,125, 220, 226, 227, 290, 317, 338

Horton, M., 15, 62, 82, 86, 111, 133,155, 156, 195, 210, 305, 323, 347,369

Hountondi, P.J., 286

IIngraham, C., 318

JJackson, G., 337Jackson, J., 337James, C.L.R., 279James, J., 306, 338James, S.M., 314Jarvis, P., 278Jay, M., 22Johnson-Bailey, J., 306Johnston, R., 51

KKarenga, M.R., 276, 278, 282, 288,

289, 290, 307, 363Kasl, E., 347Kellner, D.M., 33, 34, 184Kenway, J., 314, 324, 325

Kincheloe, J.L., 12King, M.L.Jr., 111, 299King, P.M., 81Kitchener, K.S., 81Knowles, M.S., 83, 153Kohl, H.R., 369Kohlberg, L., 153, 258, 260Kramer, D.A, 93Kreisberg, S., 121Kuhn, A., 318Kvamme, L., 99

LLabouvie-Vief, G., 81Laclau, E., 95Laing, R.D., 14, 36Lather, P., 315, 316, 321, 325, 327Law, M., 18, 221Lawson, K.H., 15Lee, J.S., 283Leiss, W., 207, 211Lindeman, E.C.L., 15, 48, 61, 62, 63,

64, 65, 120, 156, 176, 271–72, 302,305, 306, 347

Loach, K., 187Locke, A., 287, 305, 307Loewen, J., 35, 80Lorde, A., 89Luckmann, T., 56Luke, C., 314, 315, 318, 325

MMacedo, D., 306, 323Macey, D., 142MacIntyre, A.C., 295MacKinnon, C.A., 314, 318Malcolm X., 307Mandela, N., 114Marcuse, H., 12, 19, 21, 22, 37, 42, 54,

55, 56, 60, 78, 107, 182, 184,185–88, 189–219, 223, 226, 227,247, 248, 259, 277, 287, 290,316–17, 321, 326, 327, 329, 347,348, 351, 352, 354, 355, 356, 357,362, 366, 367, 368, 373, 374

Marks, R.W., 182

NAME INDEX 401


Marsden, J., 295Marx, K., 14, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25,

28, 33, 41, 73, 74, 95, 123, 124,154, 156–57, 165, 185–88, 224–25,277, 287, 293, 296, 299, 303, 313,316, 317–19, 322, 323, 324, 329,337, 353, 354, 361, 362, 363, 364,365, 366, 370

Maslow, A., 152Mayberry, K.J., 280Mayo, P., 18, 95, 112McClendon, J.H., 301McClusky, H.Y., 48McGary, H., 288McLaren, P., 19, 50, 84, 165, 322, 324,

325, 362McLellan, D., 40Meehan, J., 314, 320Mezirow, J., 5, 13, 14, 18, 59, 118, 220,

221, 249, 347Mill, J.S., 64, 168, 215Miller, J., 142Mills, C.W., 34, 85, 174, 355Modra, H., 324, 325Mojab, S., 11Morrow, R.A., 220Morss, J.R., 85Mouffe, C., 95Murdoch, R., 91Mussolini, B., 94–95

NNewman, M., 59, 103, 113–14, 116,

163, 169, 204, 207, 237Norris, S.P., 15Nyrere, J., 285

OOber, J.D., 207, 211Oberg, A., 33Orner, M., 326, 328, 329Orwell, G., 51, 52, 167, 213Outlaw, L.T.Jr., 183, 275, 276, 281,

282, 283, 286, 287, 288, 289, 290,291. 291, 293

PPalmer, P.J., 179Pari, C., 9, 112, 323Patterson, R., 15Patton, M.Q., 26Peller, G., 286Perry, W., 153Peters, J.M., 278Peterson, E.A., 278, 283, 286, 306, 307Piaget, J., 260Pierce, C., 225Popper, K.R., 34Poster, M., 4Potter, E., 312Potts, E., 307Preskill, S., 256, 271, 358, 359Prilleltensky, I, 85

QQabula, A.T., 114Quinby, L., 314

RRanucci, C., 144Reagan, R., 78Reitz, C., 201Riegel, K.F., 93Rogers, C.R., 14, 152, 153Rose, M., 369Ruddick, S., 312, 313Russo, C.S., 347

SSaltiel, I.M., 347San Juan, E. Jr., 214Sargent, L., 317Sawicki, J., 314, 321Schenke, A., 11Schutz, A., 56, 57, 59Searle, J.R., 15Serequeberhan, T., 286Sergiovanni, T.J., 56Shakespeare, W, 204Shalin, D.N., 9, 17Sheared, V., 278

402 NAME INDEX


Shereova, E., 207, 211Shor, I., 9, 112, 170, 306, 323, 366,

369Shumar, W., 20Simon, R.I., 11Sissel, P., 278Smallwood, A.P., 307Smith, B., 349Smith, S.E., 306, 307, 308Smith, T.V., 176, 302Spring, J., 91Sternberg, R.J., 81Stewart, P., 204Stice, J.E., 14

TTarule, J.M., 85, 312, 313Taylor, E.W., 49, 221Tennant, M.C., 221Thomas, K., 286Torres, C.A., 220Tough, A.M., 83Turner, R., 114Turner, T., 91

UUnderwood, S., 33Usher, R., 51, 127, 128, 131

VVogel, L., 317, 319

WWagner, R.K., 81Washington, 307Watkins, G, 333Weiler, K., 315, 324Welles, O., 70Welton, M.R., 8, 18, 30, 56, 59, 86,

162, 220, 222, 223, 270, 271, 272West, C., 7, 17, 19, 21, 34–35, 90, 94,

111, 112, 125, 165, 249, 274, 275,276, 277, 280, 282, 288, 289, 293,294–305, 301, 327, 330, 333, 336,343, 354, 359, 362, 366, 375

Wiggerhaus, R., 18Williams, R., 42, 45, 76, 95, 97, 104,

112, 355Williamson, B., 56Willis, P.E., 77, 88, 90, 91, 136Wilson, A.L., 221Wilson, M., 136Wittgenstein, L., 15Wolff, J., 21Wolpe, A.M., 318Wood, M.D., 294

YYancy, G., 275, 283, 285, 294, 296, 344Yorks, L., 347Youngman, F., 18, 20, 21

ZZinn, H., 1, 33, 76, 79, 95

NAME INDEX 403


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